HardLore - Pete Morcey: 100 Demons, Blood For Blood & The Evolution of Connecticut Hardcore

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

Destiny has come: After being officially crowned the hardest hardcore band of all time in our official tournament bracket… We’re finally joined by the great Pete Morcey, vocalist of 100 DEMONS for a long form, sit-down interview.We’re ALSO joined by special guest co-host Dan Seely of King Nine, for his historic 5th full-length appearance on a HardLore episode.We start from the beginning of Pete’s nearly 40 year musical career, from making the “definitive American oi record” in Forced Reality, spearheading heavy hardcore in Connecticut with Higher Force, joining 100 Demons and writing the iconic self-titled record, his dark folk masterpiece that is Murmur’s The Boundless Black, all the way to now singing for Blood For Blood, and making 100 Demons’ first record in 22 years, Embrace the Black Light.Thanks to Pete, Dan, and the Detroit Masonic Temple for having us.__________HardLore: A Knotfest Series, fueled by Monster Energy.Edited by Steven Grise (https://www.instagram.com/iamonenineseven/) • Title sequence by Nicholas Marzluf (https://www.instagram.com/marzluf/)• Join the HARDLORE PATREON to watch every single weekly episode early and ad-free, alongside exclusive monthly episodes: https://patreon.com/hardlorepod • Join the HARDLORE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/jA9rppggef • Get 10% off GUILTY PARTY site-wide with code HARDLORE and grab some of our favorite clothing brands of all time: https://www.guiltyparty.co/ • Get 10% off MILLS VINTAGE site-wide with code HARDLORE: https://www.millsvintageusa.com/• Get tickets for LOUDER THAN LIFE Festival! Can’t wait to see you all there: https://louderthanlifefestival.com/.________________00:00:00 - Start00:01:22 - Pete Morcey00:02:51 - Finding Punk & Hardcore in Connecticut00:17:50 - FORCED REALITY, Pete’s First Band, Defining American Oi!00:14:28 - Jocko Willink & The Connecticut Skinhead Crew00:29:00 - Forced Reality S/T & Tours00:33:22 - Sean Martin00:34:57 - HIGHER FORCE, Connecticut’s First HARD Band00:39:42 - Higher Force’s Very Confusing Discography00:43:08 - Pete Morcey: Classically Trained Opera Singer00:48:00 - The End of Higher Force & Beginning of 100 DEMONS00:51:50 - Morcey’s Restaurant & The Tuna Pita00:54:00 - Pardon this interruption…00:57:03 - The Lost Higher Force LP00:59:27 - 100 DEMONS - Self-Titled01:08:36 - His Fathers Son to Cold Wind of the Crossroads01:14:50 - Recording New 100 Demons after 22 Years01:21:00 - Larry Dwyer’s Cinnamon Challenge01:24:24 - Growing as a Vocalist & Lyricist01:31:17 - Pete’s Haunted House01:37:35 - A Visit From Bo01:46:55 - Joining Blood for Blood01:54:50 - MURMUR (Pete’s Masterpiece)02:03:24 - IG! And the IGfits!02:10:13 - Pete’s Most Personal Creative Endeavor02:20:55 - Top 4 Hardcore Records

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Hello, welcome. It's almost hard lore time. Welcome everybody to this very special week on the show where we're finally joined by the great Pete Morsi of 100 Demons, a band we have celebrated and lauded on this show long before the show, honestly.

This is a lifetime of love here. They were voted the hardest hardcore band of all time back in the hardest hardcore band bracket. Hardest hardcore band of all time. Holy shit. 100 demons. And we're finally. joined by Pete and my buddy Dan Sealy from King Nine. Pete's musical career spans nearly 40 years at this

point, and we're going to go all the way back to the beginning. And I need you to stick around. In the middle of this episode, there's a very special ghost story that I share that I think you're all going to enjoy. So without further ado, let's roll it. Hello, welcome. It's hardlord time. How you doing, Bo? What a beautiful day on the show. We are back with. two very special guests. First, may I introduce my special guest co-host this evening from Long Island, New York, King Nine vocalist, and first ever member of the Hardlore Five Deadly Venoms Club. That's what we're calling it. Damn, that's good. Dan Seeley. Thanks for being here, Dan. Thanks for having me,

Colin. A wonderful accomplice. And to my right, Lord, where to begin? He's the mayor of Waterbury. He's the governor of Connecticut Hardcore, and the vocalist of Hardlore's hardest band of all-time winner, 100 Demons, and now, Blood for Blood. Please welcome Peter A. Morsi, the third. What a pleasure it is, man. It's been a long time coming. It has.

And I'm excited, excited to be here with you guys. Great to finally have you here. You know, we've been talking about you on the show for the whole time now. So this is years in the making. I would tune in to almost every episode, and there was usually a 100 demons reference somewhere in there or my name would get brought up, and it always felt special. It was special, and we meant that shit.

So let's go back in time, let's do this right. Let's go back to growing up in the great state of Connecticut in finding punk and hardcore music. So you want a little rundown from the history, shit, well, I was always into music from as far back as I can remember. We weren't a huge musical household. There wasn't a lot of musicians in the family, but we had a lot of records.

And then I grew up flipping through my parents' records. I think my earliest memory of music is Neil Diamond and dancing to Creckle and Rosie. Maybe I was like three or four years old. My sister still mimic me doing the dance where I kind of just stood up and like bounced on my knees up and down. Classic baby style.

It's like my earliest song, I think, I ever remember in that house. And Jim Crocey was another one that was, like, big in our household, you know, a lot of, like, acoustic kind of music. And for some reason, I don't even know why, but the suite, which is such an oddball thing. There were a couple tracks that were always playing at my house when I was a kid, which was really weird when I think about it as an adult. Like, how did my parents have these records, you know? I think they only had one big hit in America at the time. But getting it to music, I always sang. I always had great experiences, like in elementary school, singing in the music class.

I had some funny stories from there where I think my music teacher from the school took a liking to me. And one of my earliest memories of music class was the whole class had to sing a song, and it was about a donkey or some shit. I don't remember what the song was. Probably Dominic. But she would walk around and tap you on the head. And if she tapped you on your head, that means you had to stop singing. And you weren't singing properly.

And, you know, halfway through the song, everyone's heads were tapped except mine. And I had finished the rest of the song by myself. And that's when I, the first time I realized, like, I think I sing okay, you know. Wait, I'm goaded? Yeah. This class is shot. Second grade. Thank you, Mrs. Cuckus.

Wow. So, you know, from there I was just always into music. You had the sauce early. I think, I guess. I always enjoyed singing, you know. I think probably around fifth grade, maybe fourth grade is when I started discovering, like, other types of music. You know, just more like hard rock, heavy metal, getting into like bands like Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. And from the older kids in my neighborhood, there was like, you know, like, sure.

stuff that I heard through them that was interesting. So that all came before punk? Yeah, definitely. I think for most people from that time in America, in the 80s, early 80s, I think everyone I knew started with heavy metal first, you know, in hard rock. Is this radio? Are you in terrestrial radio yet? Is that happening in Connecticut?

A little bit, but mostly like neighborhood kids that influenced me, you know? There was a lot of metalheads and pothead dudes. Sure. you know and they would slip start talking about music and started with the bigger bands first by by sixth grade i was into like metallica and slayer and these guys i bought a witch finder general record off this guy named uh steve jeraska he was an older metal head i was probably in seventh grade when that happened and if you do i know anything about which bono general they were like a new wave of british heavy metal band and they had these real scandalous record

covers but like naked women out and the first one of the first one of I bought from it was death penalty. And it was like, these guys were dressed up as with a witch finder general. And there was like a naked, she was the witch on the cover and she's naked. Sprawled out with like bloody chest. And I had that record and I would, I hid it. You know, I didn't want my mother looking through my record collection back then. There were a few records I had that I hid that in the first wasp, the fuck like a beast EP.

That's another one. That came a little later. Sure. that's what I got into first you know all the early Metallica Slayer motorhead Venom that I discover the record stores in my town we had two of the best record stores in Waterbury one was Brass City Records that was owned by this guy named Walt Rest in Peace and and Sheepskate Records which later became Phoenix Records and these were that opened up a whole world to us.

You know, my neighborhood and I would walk down town Waterbury every weekend, at least seven, eight of us, all the guys that were into metal, and we'd walk to these record stores, and we'd come home with, like, stacks of records. You know, it'd walk like three miles, four miles one way, go to both shops and walk back home,

and we'd come home and have new music weekly, and we would trade off records with each other. And that's when, like, I remember, when Rye the Lightning came out that was like the big one we were all waiting for and I was still really good. I was probably in sixth or seventh grade when that came out,

seventh grade and I brought Rye the Lightning home and my turntable was 84 or something? Yeah. Yes, I'm all was 82. I think it was 84. My turntable was broken and I couldn't listen to it

and I had my friend Marty from the neighborhood and he was like, well, since your turntable's broken can I listen to it? So I gave it to him. I had to wait like two or three weeks to even hear this damn record. You didn't go to his house and just listening with it? Which was like torturing me, you know. Well, you know, I got it back.

It was an intimate experience. You needed to hear it alone. That was that. You needed to hear it alone. Yeah, that's like something you really wanted. It's just, you know. And back then is when you had a record and you sat with it and you studied everything on it. You studied every picture, the T-shirts they were wearing, the special thanks list.

Like everything on it. You just knew it back. Those early records, I could tell you everything that's on, you know, they were like encyclopedias to me. That's how you found. out about music, you know. Did you guys have like a ringleader that was like always coming back with like, we got to hear this, or we got to buy this, or we got to?

Maybe at first, but eventually it just turned to everyone kind of discovering their own thing, you know? Yeah. A lot of times we buy records just from the cover art themselves. You gotta do it, man. And made a lot of shitty mistakes. We gotta learn about meatloaf, really. But also picked out these gems that were like, fuck man. I remember buying the Sam A and the first record.

and I was pretty young and that record cover scared me for some reason. It was like just, who are these dudes? I didn't know anything about the Misfits. You heard Sam Hand before the Misfits? Oh yeah. So what's the punk or Harcl record that turns it from commodity to community for you? Honestly, I think it's like some of the early Connecticut bands that I really started getting into first. There was a band called Lost Generation that,

record called Return from Incas. They were early Connecticut punk band, I think their first single, they put it on like 81 or 82, and they put out an LP, maybe it was 82, 83, and I bought it at Brass City Records that it used bin, had no idea what it was, and bought it with the stack of metal records, and I think I paid like two bucks for it,

and I put it on, and it was nothing like I ever heard before. And you didn't know they were from Connecticut? No, no clue. And maybe I figured it out a month or two later when I started realizing there was a lot, a whole other world besides these metal bands and there were flyers for shows and these zines that were free and I started reading about them. But that was like the first record that hit. You know, it's like, this is different, man. And it's still one of my favorite records to this day.

Flash forward almost 40 years later, I'm friends with Joe Diaz that sings for the band. They just recorded their first new record in 35 years. I got to sing on two songs. And what's really cool, he's like, we're talking as I'm recording. He's like, Pete, You know, Lost Gen only had two guest vocalists in all our years of recording. One is HR and one is Cheetah Chrome. He's like, you're in good company, man. And I was like, holy shit. It's like so, so cool, you know.

That's how I feel, sitting on a 100 Demons record. Well, that was a big deal for us too, man. Come on. It was. We'll get there. You were the fun. It's coming. So when do you start going to shows?

And what's that like in Connecticut in the 80s? I started growing probably like my earliest shows were like metal concerts you know 84 85 started with the big things first like it's ideal in concert so Iron Maiden in concert and they that saw I was the youngest kid the biggest yet the youngest and were you big young yeah I was giant there's no way it wasn't I was always big everyone always thought when I was you big yeah I mean yeah I mean yeah Everyone always thought I was a 25-year-old when I was like 14. Yeah.

You 100% were buying beer way before anybody could even figure it out. I was the guy. Everyone asked to go get him beers, you know. And I was like 16 during that, which was crazy. Good for you guys. But yeah, the earliest concert were the big concerts, you know, arenas and seeing bands like that. The first smaller shows were still metal shows, but there was a place in Connecticut called the Agora Ballroom. in West Harford, and I saw Anthrax there,

and there was a local metal band called Demon X that play that show, too. And that's, like, my first experience with, like, people washing in a pit, and it was just crazy metal dudes. And they were doing, like, punk rock and hardcore kids there, which I didn't know anything much about yet. So I saw a few shows at the Agora, and I think the summer of that year, the small club in Connecticut was called Sneakers opened up.

And this is probably like 1985 right now. And this was a small club environment, two, 300 people. But this is where I saw, like, Heltic Frost and Voivod and Exodus, King Diamond on his first solo tour. And that was like very intimate, you know. The Fatal Portrait Tour was intimate? It was like, you could touch these guys. Wow.

They weren't on a stage that was a mile away from you. There was only 300, 400 people at most at these shows. And it was wild. And those were like my earliest memories of getting right before discovering true, you know, hardcore shows. As we moved along, it was just, you know, meeting different people along the way. Neighborhood guys turned into guys from other neighborhoods. And I eventually hooked up with my buddy Jeff Fortier, who and Dave De Palma, they were the first guys that started bringing me to my earliest hardcore shows.

and we would go every weekend and we started out at the anthrax. They were a couple years older than me, and they brought me to my first show. I think it was the meat men. The first show I went to at the anthrax. You know, no big deal. Meetmen at the anthrax. Crazy, dude.

I went there. Were you moshing? Yes. I remember I was moshing and some like dude came up to me. And he's like, hey man, you got to calm down. And I was like, what's this guy talking? I didn't even feel like I was doing anything crazy. He was telling me to calm down.

Anyway, the day after that show, head fucking shaved. That's right. It was it. I found my life that was like my world. That was my world. I wonder if anybody has ever actually calmed down when someone has been like, bro, you got to relax. I mean, calm down. Your first instinct is to not come down.

Yes. What do you mean to calm down? Yeah. So that was that was it. That was my introduction to it. introduction to it and I don't think I missed a weekend of going shows. Do you do you hear years since then? Do you think you still hold a band like the Meat Man in like some special place? Oh yeah. Like whether or not like you really, really

like them. Yeah. I mean I do I do love them. Yeah, yeah. Years later I got to book them at a you know, I used to do TNT Fest in Connecticut and we booked them and it was fucking awesome time. Yeah. I started meeting all the people that I saw as a kid and started making friends with something. They become real people. Not just, your peers, you know,

and that happened, you know, years and years later. But yeah, it's, all those early shows are very special to me. When we just talked to Ray,

he described early Connecticut hardcore as like, kind of the like safe alternative. Like if you're going to shows there, it's going to be safer than going to New York. That changed us at some point.

Yeah. But what do you think separated Connecticut from like New York and Boston at the time? At that time, this is right around the time when Connecticut started, it's a little bit before Connecticut started becoming the midway point between both scenes. It was right before a huge straight-edge scene popped up. So it was still like a different world there.

You know, there were pockets of sub-genres of subcultures, you know, different people. There were punks and skinheads and straight-edge kids and metal heads. and everyone was like kind of going to shows together. And those shows were populated by all the weirdos. You know, it wasn't just like, here's a straight-edge matinee with 600 of this kind of homogenized same kind of person in there.

So within a year after that, that's when like, I think New York hardcore started becoming really big. And that sound started happening. And the anthrax just became like kind of another part of the New York state. scene and even in the Boston scene, you know, became the stopping ground there.

And during that time, my friends and I were always in between either at the Anthrax or the Pyramid Club or at Seabees. So they were interconnected in a way where you were going to all of them. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Who were the people and bands that define like early Connecticut hardcore for you?

Let's say the Larry Dwyer's of the 80s, you know? Yeah. I mean, they were like the older guys, you know, and as years went by, I made friends of these guys. But all the earliest bands from when I first started going there were, you know, lost generation, 76% uncertain. Vatican Commandos, seizure. It was another, you know, bigger local band, youth of today as well, you know. As we progressed, you know, my friends and I started starting our own bands. But they were like the early guys that were there

almost from the beginning, you know. So what's your first band? My first band was forced reality, which was, we were the first skinhead band from Connecticut. I evolved into a skinnet within like a year, you know. People have to know what they were. Sure. I know what anything that was about.

But I think this is when I saw the look of it and the, I felt a calling, you know. My earliest memory of being of skin, I was actually going to Iron Maiden concert. As we're waiting in line to get in, there's this huge brick building and spray painted on the wall. And I've said this before.

I think I wasn't in an interview or a quote from a book that I did an interview with, spray painted on the wall in this huge sentence. It just said, I will be a skinhead until the end of time. And then as I went to my first shows, I just started seeing the people you know, with that look, didn't know much about it, didn't know what OI was or anything.

And I slowly started finding out through other people, through zines. You know, obviously everyone says the same thing. There was no internet to turn to at that time. There was only like people you could talk to or people you can write letters to or the records you could find. And I started finding a lot of, you know, punk and OI records and moving into that direction with the music. And within like a year at that time, I was like, I'm going to start a band. In my head earlier, before Force Reality, I was like, I'm going to start a band. You know, and I named it in my head.

I drew a logo. It sounded like this generic straight-edge name. It was called, like, United Effort. And I didn't know how to play an instrument. I drew a cool logo. I even wrote it on the awning at CBGB's in, like, in 1986. Yeah, it was on there. I brought it a magic marker.

And years later, it was still there. I'd always check to see if it was there. And it was real. it was never a band, but in my head I was like, this is going to be my first band, you know. I decided I wanted to start a band with these other guys I met, you know, that I went to shows with,

and there were Waterbury guys, and one was Phil Gugliotti, who was the original guitar player from Forrest Reality, and we talked about it, and we're like, let's start a band. So my first memory of us jamming is sitting on his mother's front step,

him went to guitar, me with like a radio shack microphone, yelling into a radio, and we wrote two songs, The first song was called Forced Reality, and the second song was called Police, you know, a very anti-cop song, 14, 15-year-old kids. Within six months, we wrote six songs, and we went to record a demo. Waterbury Warriors. Waterbury Warriors, man.

And it was a... Classic stuff. There was this little studio outside of Waterbury in Prospect, Connecticut, called Rens Studio. And this guy's name was David Rens Z, Chainsmoker. I think everything was recorded on like half inch reel. But a lot of the local bands went there, metal bands, hardcore bands. I remember seeing demos from, there was a local band in Waterbury called Rumatic Zombies. And I think they did their demo there.

And a couple other ones, I don't recall. But we went in there and we recorded our demo, and it was me and Phil. Our buddy Bob played second guitar. Vinnie Salimita played bass. These were all guys from a neighborhood in Town Plott, which was, I was from Bunker Hill. Town Plott was like the Italian neighborhood of Waterbury. And they were from there.

Those names sound like they were from that. And our drummer was Graham Christie, who was just a guy that was in my high school class, I knew how to play drums, you know? And he wasn't really into like the punk or hardcore scene. Great guy. I still talked to him. But he recorded the demo with us. And we went in there and probably recorded the thing

in like three hours, you know, six songs, no clue how to play. We played instruments very caveman-esque, you know. But your first band. It fits the genre though. Yeah. Your first band in 1986 would go on to influence bands like Dropkick Murphys and the Bruiser.

Yeah, became like an influential band. We were one of the... That's me. That picture, I think, is probably from 88. It was a little later. A couple years later. Yeah, Pete's like 12 years old. Yeah, the band, you know, as we started figuring after the demo,

The demo's rough and raw and just kind of weird oi-core. We didn't really know how to play our instruments yet or sing, but it was still kind of cool. Then I remember as we progressed, we started writing songs a little bit better and more rock and roll sounding. We did like a two-song demo, which never got released. Then we did a four-song demo, which never got released. But the tapes got out there, and they started like,

people started hearing them. and by like 1988 you know everyone tape traded back then there was a whole network of underground music punks and skins and I would trade these forced reality demos with other guys and other bands from other states

and uh one of the the tapes was the last four song demo we did got into the hands of uh this Sean Gerard from this band of moral discipline from Washington DC and he was telling me

about how Choke from Slapshot had a band, called Stars and Stripes, and they were gonna release the Immoral Discipline record seven inch or maybe a full-int that was gonna come out. And as a favor, he sent the forced reality demo to Choke that was never released. And within a couple weeks, broke track me down somehow and talked to us and he wanted to sign the band.

The songs on there were a world apart from our demo tape. They were like, even when I hear him now, I can't believe we wrote these songs. On the LP? They're pretty cool. Yeah. There were four different, these four songs we did, I ended up getting re-recorded for the LP.

They were the original versions, but they were done really well. You're singing melodically in your first band. Yeah. A skinhead band for Fayette. And you talked about singing in elementary school and being the best in the class, obviously. There's always been this lore about you being like a classically trained opera scene. Oh, that came much later.

That's what I always heard. That was the first thing I had. ever heard you check this shit out like yo you heard repeat process you know why is is to what extent is that true it's true so if you want to jump ahead just a little bit just just operatically um well i that came later like in the early 90s unbelievable and we couldn't talk about that we'll get that's another whole like section of my life that was let's talk about this guy real quick john willing tell me a little more about this this film the A young Jocko.

That's, that's, it's crazy how, you know, how his life steam rolled into later on, you know. But there was a whole crew of a skinheads in Connecticut at the time, you know, and every few months, it seemed like new people would pop up. And, um, jaco and his, you know, Nathan, Elgin James and John all grew up in the same area, Connecticut, kind of where I live now out in the northwest corner, middle of nowhere. And we befriended those guys, and they started hanging with us,

and they started coming to all the forced reality shows. And if we played out of state, they'd come with us. And they were just like, it was just our crew of friends, you know. At one point in Connecticut, it was a massive amount of skinheads. You know, there was probably 200 of us in the 80s.

Every town had a whole, like, division, you know. And a lot of wild times, a lot of fun times, too. you know we didn't we we caused our fair share of chaos but we were always there every weekend going to shows and enjoying ourselves and we were some of the earliest skinned bands in america you know i was first reality you know there's another one called power surge where they were more oi-core and it sadly they're almost a forgotten band they recorded a seven record at the anthrax the anthrax was supposed to relieve release their seven inch but they just never got it and i've had the reels forever so someday we're going to get that thing out there and it's really good

But going back to John and Jocko and Nathan, they were just part of our friend group, you know, and they traveled with us everywhere. And, you know, we had a lot of fun, you know. We did a lot of cool stuff together. They eventually all moved to New Haven. They befriended Bruce, Monster from up in, I think they brought him back from like New Hampshire, Vermont. I forget where he was living.

And they all got a house in New Haven. And that was like our hangout or clubhouse, you know. And we were based there every weekend going to parties and going to shows. The forced reality was playing. We were all traveling together and doing our thing, you know, all the way until probably the end of 89, 90. And that's when Nathan decided he was going to move to Boston. And that's when Jocko decided he was going to the Navy.

I heard a story about Jocko when he was going to the Navy. I don't know if this is true or not. I heard it from a semi-reliable source. But I heard the day he was leaving. I guess everybody was at a show or so. Maybe it was the day before he was leaving or whatever it was. Everybody was at a show. And somebody, I'm going to say who,

they said their goodbyes and somebody on, that fucking guy's going to wash out. He ain't going to fucking make it. And then he's the most legendary Navy SEALs. He's like, I've never heard that. But I couldn't even imagine anyone saying that, you know. Oh, really? He was like an enigma, even back then, you know.

He was, not that he was just out there being a powerhouse badass or anything. He just had this discipline and this look that was just different from anybody else. Is the forced reality self-titled cover to like a caricature of him? Yes. So the picture you just showed me was Jocko and that's John Bozac on the left. John was like the artist in our group, you know. And I remember we were playing our first show in Boston and we were forced reality in anti-heroes. The first time they ever came up here, they drove straight up.

from Atlanta and played at this club called Ground Zero, which is right next to the Middle East, long-gone club. And John said, I designed a shirt, and I made some. You know, he made him a homemade, hand-screen printed shirts. And I think I didn't see the shirts at all until they brought them to the show. And it was fucking awesome, the most bold graphic design, you know. He's like, I just used Jocko to model for it.

He just stood there, and I just pretty much drew him, you know. Meanwhile, over the years, everyone always just assumed it was me. sure. I definitely did. I was that you? I was like, no, that's my buddy John. But they brought the shirts to the show.

I think we've had like 30 or 40 of the original shirt. I think 25 out of the original all bled and ran when people ran through the Larson's a total mess. But there's still a few surviving ones that I know that people have, you know, that I've seen over the years. So that was a T-shirt before it was any album artwork or any. Yeah. Yep.

Which eventually, you know, a year later, we've recorded the record for Patriot. That was what we used. Force reality self-titled. I've seen many call it the definitive American oil record. Pretty cool. That is cool. How extensively did Force Reality tour on this record?

Hardly, I mean, we played out of state. Back then too, you know, especially in the height of the 80s with like the big skinhead scare, all the TV shows like Haralda Rivera and Sally Jesse Raphael and Phil Donahue were portray rang, you know, a lot of that scene in a very negative light. And rightfully so, there was like a big divide in it towards the late 80s with, you know, like Nazi skinheads and white power skinheads and like just regular skin dudes that were just hanging out and playing oil music and wanted to go to shows. Genuine concern.

Yeah. And it was, you know, it was a very violent time. A lot of people got mistaken for other groups. It was hard to be a skin ed, you know, walking around. And we were no strangers to fighting, you know. everyone kind of got into it in a lot of places they went to. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't super insane, but there was, you know, there was a lot of sketchy paths you walked on.

Sure. And back then, there was just no one wanted to book bands like that. So the shows were few and far between. Every state had like a couple bands and you were lucky to play maybe four or five times a year, you know. Sometime there were fests, you know, smaller ones in New Jersey or New York. Connecticut, Pennsylvania. We travel.

I think the furthest we've ever played back then was Washington, D.C., you know, played at like the 930 club. So you guys are just kind of like local legend. Yeah. I mean, people knew us. Yeah, Stigma's been covering for reality. Yeah, that was just mind-blowing too.

You had two cover songs on the first record. That came later, you know, in the late 90s we got back together again, and that's when, like, people started realizing you guys, we were a band in the 80s, you know. Are there, like, skinhead dudes you meet today who are, like, just getting into 100 demons and are like, that's the fucking spirituality guy, though? My paths crisscross with so many weird things, you know, I'll walk. People know me from, what, from 100 demons, they know me from Force Reality. They know me from Higher Force.

You know, I'm the dude that owns the tattoo shop. I'm the dude that owned the screen printing place. I'm the dude that did a podcast, you know. Not a lot of people know all of it, you know. So I'd always get like. For all you. Yeah, for all you viewers at home. Over the years, you know, like demons would be playing and people would be like, wait, you're saying for forest reality?

You know, news didn't travel as fast. Sure. Even 20, 25 years ago, it was just, you know, find things out. But now it's like lightning. Everyone knows everything in seconds. It was funny being on tour with demons later on, like in the early 2000s in Europe. And we'd pull up to, like, a city. be like a contingent of skinhead guy contingent of skinheads that would show up that knew the dude

from forced reality sings for a hundred demons you know and they would show up either a pick me up and hang out and have a great time or b excuse me sir they would just start fights at the show yeah just you know do the things that they're expected to do stand up front and scream force reality for three songs while you're playing yeah it's funny when i went to you know we did the cox bar show in Boston last month and I brought my friend Ray with me and as I'm walking through the crowd people are coming out to me and like some people

are talking to me about blood for blood or or 100 demons or forced reality and I was like everyone knows me from every band you know and I was like all we need to do is hear something about higher force as we're leaving the club some random guy just walks up to me

and he's like hey man I don't know it's probably not possible what are the chances of a higher force record coming out and I was like here Yeah. That's a hit them all. I hit them all tonight. Bingham McFoly. And I'm not complaining.

I'm happy every one of those bands has like a following. Well, hey, let's get there. I mean, I don't know if, and I'm being honest, I don't know if there's another person that's done, had four successful bands. It's like you and Scott Vogel, including Murmur. Oh my God. We're getting there, maybe.

So many worlds. Yeah, so many worlds, man. Where do you and when do you meet one Sean Michael? Oh, Sean. So we knew of each other, probably going back into the late 80s because Phil that played in Forest Reality, Sean and Phil were friends before Sean and I were friends, you know?

This isn't filthy, is it? Yes, that's filthy. Oh, my God. He's the original Forest Reality guitar player. There's a few things that I've heard Sean say, more than any other sentence. And it's me and Pete, this one time me and Beattie,

and my boy Filthy. Oh, and Larry Dwyer. Yep. Those four things I've heard him say. Yeah, and between those people, you know, there's a billion stories, you know. Yeah, but Sean and Phil were friends back starting, I think, in the late 80s.

Sean didn't go to a lot of shows in the late 80s. His mother was like, wouldn't let him, you know. She was just like, you're not doing this, you know? So we met in the early 90s, right after the 80s. I think in the early 90s, Sean moved out to California for a while. He did. And I knew of his existence because he still was friends with a lot of mutual friends. But when he came back, that's when we started really getting to know each other, like 91, say then.

Good year. And within a year, he was playing in Higher Force with us. You know, Higher Force started in like 92, which was just another whole different world. Listen, you might not be the original singer of Hundred Demons, but there is no Hundred Demons without Higher Force. Oh, definitely not. How does this come together?

Hunter Demon, or Higher Force came about. So this was at the end of the Anthrax. There weren't a lot of shows going on. There was kind of lull and hardcore. The anthrax closed. In the same town, Norwalk, there were still a couple of clubs. At first, it was like the, I think it was the zebra club, which was like a strip bar. And there was the Fortune Cookie, which was a Chinese restaurant that still hosted shows.

And then there was a place called The Nightbreed, which eventually turned into the apocalypse. And that place was run by Bill Bateman. Old Connecticut had a band called Resin. They were kind of like a parody, hardcore weed smoking band. you know but he bought all the shows in the early 90s to these clubs that's when everyone from A the skinhead scene started fading away in the hardcore and straight-edge scene starting to fade away and all the remnants of those scenes became friends with each other the same kind of two groups of people that were like punch and kick each other at shows turned out to be weeded out all everybody else and became like the tightest you know as we came in the the best of friends. And hardcore was in, it started, it was, never fully left, but it was a different sound was emerging, you know.

More metallic. More metallic. We were definitely like the first heavy, heavy hardcore band in Connecticut. And we weren't too many outside of us in the rest of the country either, you know. What's the reaction like in Connecticut to higher force at the time? Pretty good. you know because it's like finally it was like a group of friends who had a built-in group of friends that knew we were doing this all guys that were like around and playing in bands that

started doing something together and uh we started writing songs it was me my stepbrother dave duncan Dave kimball Sean wasn't in the band yet Bubba was on base Jeremy he was the youngest now he was the young boy he was like 14 or 15 He was in a band called Test of Time, a straight-edge band that played the anthrax. And he was, you know, towards the end, 1990 at the anthrax. And he was like 14 back then, too. And Reish. Shout out Reish.

Shout out, Rich. Now, funny story, Reish, the second forced reality show ever was at a church in Watertown, Connecticut. Town over was forced reality. We met these girls sled riding. And they're like, hey, we do a show. We told them we were in a band, you know. And they're like, we do a show every year at our church. And we play, we had heavy metal bands playing.

I was like, oh, I'm in a metal band, you know, just to get a show. And so forced reality got on this show. It was in March of like 1987 or 88. Can I remember? And opening that show was a metal cover band that did like covers of Slayer and Testament and this and that. Do they change the lyrics to Jesus stuff? No, no, no. Well, this is the good story.

So we don't know who these guys are. I get to the show, we're all hanging out. It's like all our miscreant friends and all the local like metalheads. And my dad comes to the show. You know, my parents never came to shows. My dad came to the show. Just pick this local.

And he's like, Peter, come here. I want to introduce you to someone. And it's the older guy. He's like, this is my friend, Richard Rosa. And this is his son, Rich. And he plays drums in the first band that's playing tonight. And they were called Conspiracy.

and they were the metal cover band. That's the first time I saw, or I met Rish, you know. Dude, these sledding Christian chicks. Yep. They started a hundred demons. So, you know, we didn't start hanging out just yet for a couple years, but that's the first time we met each other. Time Pass.

But anyways, they played the show that night. Of course, my friends are fucking terrible. Phil and all the guys from, like, Tompua, as they're playing, they go in the church and they're throwing stink bombs. And next thing you know, like, the whole place is cleared out. Like, they're all sides. Okay. And, uh, did Rich have the goatee then?

No. Did he have a... It seems like it could be permanent, but no. Did he have a conspiracy bong or a jet ski? Not yet. Oh, okay. He was probably smoking weed back then, but I don't think as heavily. Okay.

As, you know, the last 30 years. He has to be one of the earliest weed adopters in the hardcore scene. Just saying. Definitely. Yeah. Allegedly. Yes. Right.

So the higher force. seven-inch. We got to reissue this thing. Never came out. It's unbelievable. It was never a seven-inch. What's the tape? The tape is just the point. I give you a rundown on the history of musicality of higher force. You did the same songs a few times, right? No, a couple of them. Yeah. So I started a record label called Round Two Records in the early 90s. It was myself and my best friend Mark Martin. You know, he passed away years ago, one of our best friends, you know, greatest guy ever. And we only put out a few things the first thing we did put out was a compilation seven-inch called round two in an endless fight and we recorded it was higher force uh evolved which was mike the don't and shaw

martin's first band um another wall livestock in the groundwork from connecticut not Arizona it was a dismay was supposed to be on but they couldn't do it for some reason they couldn't get us a song in time but we did a five song seven inch it was the first higher force song we we recorded called Born Free. We recorded it in some weird studio up near Hartford. One of the most disgusting sounds ever, it sounded like the guitar riffs in the song or just like this weird digital kind of like,

I don't know, I couldn't even, can't even explain it, but it's really bad. The whole seven inch sounds bad. I remember reading a review and they're like, this seven inch is good. Sounds like shit, though. Evolve sounds like it was recorded in a cardboard box, you know? Some of these things were taken off like four-track demo recorders and pre-not the vinyl.

But the higher force demo sounds incredible. So after the 7-inch, we went and recorded four songs at River Street Studio, which was a nice studio on New Haven. Those four songs that came out on the cassette, years later, was originally going to be a 7-inch. So we did those four songs, and they were really good. Let's get it going. know we should.

A couple of people have been wanting to put it out for years, especially everything, because I think we have like 13, 14 songs put together that just needs to come out as a cool one. And let me tell you, this demo sounds like everything I like at the same time. And it makes you understand why Sean is in twitching tongues, if that makes sense.

Yeah, definitely. Like, we sound more similar than most other bands, you know? And it, to me, like, hearing that, later in life is like I could not escape Connecticut if I tried. Yeah. This is this, sonically, this was my destiny the whole time.

Tell me about, did Higher Force, was the Bristol Bike Exchange a thing when Higher Force was a band? It was. Yep. But the first round of Higher Force, bike exchange wasn't doing shows yet. Because I think we stopped playing in like 96, six for a while.

But before, so 92 to 96. Yeah, we were mostly playing like places in Norwalk, like the apocalypse or the Nyprie. We were playing in New Haven at some random clubs. And how serious are you taking higher force? Kind of serious. Because it started going really well. And we started getting a good following.

It wasn't a touring band either, but we did play a bunch of out-of-state shows. and this is how I got, I'll segue into a little bit of the classical music thing. I was obviously like, we would do multiple shows on a weekend and I'd blow my voice out and I had no clue, like, how to sing properly.

And I discovered through connections a singer, a voice teacher who lives up in Granby, Connecticut, like where Sean lives up in that area. Her name was Jana Pavachek. I went to go get a lesson from her. I explained to her like my problems. You know, I'm free.

I'm playing this kind of music, and she was like a classically trained singer, and that's what she taught. And she heard it, and she was like, Jesus fucking Christ. What is this? That's you, you know? I was like, yeah, and I'm losing my voice.

She's like, oh, no shit, you're losing your voice. This is not humanly possible. It's not sustainable to sing like this. This is before anyone really cracked the code on how to properly scream. And I feel like, dude, in force reality, you're like belting start to finish. Yep.

And higher force, it sounds like you figured it out. Yeah. And you're blowing your shit. Yeah. And it was good. But I always had a very sensitive voice. You know, it was easy for me to blow it out. You know, I would push it and push it and push it.

I think I had never had any issues or, like, really bad strains or polyps or anything. But anyways, I went to the teacher. The first day there, she's playing some. She's like, I'll follow me on the piano and playing some scales, you know. E-e-back-and-forth. Classic. Within like 10 minutes, she's like, do you know you have a full range? And I was like, what the fuck's that mean?

She's like, well, you can hit like bass notes and tenor notes. And I was like, oh, cool. And I was like, can you just teach me how to sing so I don't lose my voice? She's like, I can't do that. But I think you really need to sing this, you know. And she convinced me to do classical music, you know. And she didn't convince me to quit higher force or anything like that. But it just opened up this other world.

and within like three months I was like learning like German leader and French art songs and Italian arias and it was almost like a project for her I think to see if she can take this bald maniac. Psycho. Yeah. And you were her greatest creation. This is like in my early, late teens early 20s. What was her last name? Frankenstein?

Pivacek. She passed away a few years ago. She was literally one of the most wonderful people in the world. And she changed her life. She did a lot for. me and she put herself out there for me and she got me accepted into like one of the really toughest vocal programs to get into at a college and I got accepted they only took a few people a year and I quit after like fucking six months you know you got it I got in that's what matters

that's what you got to do it was in Miami on Miami Beach and it was like Sodom and Gomorrah down there and it was so hard to like sing do the work. How old are you when you went down there? This is in like the mid-90, actually a little later, like 97, I think. So I was like 25. That's not good. Yeah. So I moved down there to study music, and it was just like, and as I'm doing, I'm questioning

myself the whole time. It's like, is this me? Is this what I really want to do? Like, I enjoyed it when I was doing with her, and I was like, I did some of my own, like, the silos. It was. It made my mom really happy. I'm sure.

It made her really happy. I did like a recital at a church in Waterbury after a year of like singing with my teacher and packed. And we saw like 250 tickets, you know, all our friends and family came out. Sean was there. And I did like, I did like 15 like songs, you know, and the last one was a song called Barbara, which was like a Broadway song. And I sang it to my mom. And she broke down crying.

And she begs me to still to this day to sing it for her. And I don't remember it. And I can't find it anywhere like online. So, but it was a fun time. It was a fun path. But once I got into school and started studying that, I just, it felt like, there was a higher force calling. Yeah, that's exactly what happened.

I fucking packed up my car, packed up my apartment. School didn't even properly withdraw. They were calling me for weeks. Where are you after I got accepted into this sick vocal program? I was too much of a pussy to, like, tell them I don't want to do it anymore. And within like three weeks, higher force was playing again at Bristol bike exchange. And you probably sounded so good. for a while yeah yeah and then everybody just spread that rumor for the next 20 years yeah they really did it

got to me it wasn't a rumor yeah that was real and during that second incarnation of it um you know we wrote some more songs we recorded some more songs you sure did it went to like around 1999 and around that time i was getting a little burnt on it again and i'm like i don't know if i want to play right now back to Miami Beach. And that's where 100 demons happened. You know, I quit, not on any bad terms at all. Always stayed friends with everybody. Like, it wasn't like anything negative.

But I left, and it was Sean, Bubba, and Riesh from Higher Force. And I left, and that's when Bruce LaPage came. Right. You know, and a lot of those early 100 Demon songs were actually Higher Force songs. songs that Bruce, you know, re-did with his own touch and own lyrics, but like forsaken and hard luck. Those were... Musically were... Those were higher four songs.

So it 100 even starts and you're not like, what the fuck, guys? It's like you understand. Not at all. You exited. I exited. Okay. Yeah, there was no problem. And for years, Bruce always thought I was like mad.

I was like, dude, like, I knew Bruce since the 80s, you know? Which is crazy. But there was never any hard feelings. It never once any issues at all. I know, there never would have been because it was, those are my dudes. I still hung out with them. I was doing backup vocals on the first record. Oh, wow.

I was helping coordinate all the backing vocals on the first record. I was like, it's got to be like this. That's hard lower right there. You know, so there was never any problems, you know. I mean, it probably just works to the benefit of 100 demons to have two great minds, just being like, let's work together and make the best genetic band of all time. The whole beginning of that band, you know. But as they started progressing, of course, I got the itch to play again.

And next thing you know, it's like I got a call from Tang Records in California. And it was Curtis. And he was like, hey, this is Pete, you're in Forest Reality. And he's like, I've been talking to Choke. And I've been talking to him about reissuing all the records he put out. And I wanted to talk to you, make sure to get the permission first. We want to reissue the Forced Reality record on Tang Records. was such a small pressing, you know.

There was only a thousand LPs made of the first round. So as soon as that happened, I was like, maybe Forest Reality needs to play again. So that was like, boom, the next incarnation of forced reality. That started for another couple of years. I bounced back and forth between Forest Reality

and higher fours and 100 demons, like so many different times. And like 1997, the advanced release demo tape like officially comes out. Same year of satisfaction. Yep. Connecticut's on fire.

Yeah. And then they take Sean. Yep. Yeah. Sean was in 100 demons when they took them. And stole them. Yeah. And then he...

I was out of 100 demons when that happened too. So, like, there was no weirdness for me. There might have been a little bit of weirdness, but not really. You know, everyone still stayed friends. No one was ever mad at Sean for anything. It's like, we're all best friends. Yeah. We still are to this day.

That's right. there's been a lot of members of 100s. And believe it or not, there's been a few different vocalists too. You know, some guys like Moose sang a hundred deans for a lot. And they have this guy Matt that sang a few shows. That's when I finally came in and just leveled out the band, you know. Between all of these things, are you ever like, I have to find a career or I have to, you know what I mean?

Like, are you worried about, like, what's going on? And like you're personal, like... Kind of. Because the bands are taking up time that's like, am I doing this, am I not? And everybody else seems to be kind of doing their own thing. Yeah. And you're bouncing. So during all this time, I always worked too. You know, I obviously never played enough to make money, especially, even if I did play constantly back then.

What was I going to bring home, you know? 50 bucks. I grew up in a family that owned a restaurant. It was called a Morsese restaurant, a barbecue restaurant. And I worked there for a moment. when I was like 12 years old, well, I was almost like 30 on and off, you know? I've heard in the past that there is a world famous dish

from Morrissey's restaurant. I believe it's a tuna pita. Well, the tuna pita. Yeah, the tuna pita. This has become a joke. Okay. This has become a serious joke over the years. And it's a story I told, I think I told Jimmy first,

where, you know, we had a big, it was a big charcoal grill restaurant. We had rotissory chickens and ribs, barbecue stuff, and we made all different types of sandwiches. And we had like tuna fish. You know, you can get a tuna on on rye. You can get a tuna mel. You can get a tuna milk. You can get a tuna on any kind of bread. We also had nice pita bread. The same, the same pita bread they would put on gyrows, you know? So a popular sandwich at the restaurant was a tuna fish on pita. And one day, one day I was, I rarely worked the counter. I was always cooking, but I was at the

people would walk up, you place your order, we had little pads or everything down. He's like, yeah, I think I want a tuna pita. And I was like, I was like, you know, I was like, like a tuna pita? He's like, yeah, that sounds good. And I'm like, all right, yeah, we can do that right at town. He's like, question for you. What exactly is a tuna pita? And I was like, well, I go, wait, you're ordering this sandwich,

but you don't know what it is? And he's like, well, I see everybody ordering it. It looks so good. I was like, basically it's just our tuna fish on a nice peanut bread. He's like, oh, yeah, it's perfect. So that's where it came from. It's got so exaggerated over the years. Of course.

So many different voices and it's become just like this running joke. But that was, you know, my family's restaurant was awesome. All the, my misfit weirdo friends there, we hired them. My dad hired them all there. That was shown work there. That was the spot. That was the transition spot for everybody. You were going to go on the road for a week and then we're going to come back and go back to the restaurant.

Some people asked it. Some people didn't, you know. But John, who put out the higher force demo, he had a record company, all it sees records. Chano we call them. He passed away, you know, a couple years ago, a great friend of ours, but he worked at Morrissey's forever. You know, he was like the main dude there. Pardon this interruption. You know, I hate to stop you. Even a second from this incredible episode with Pete and Dan, but I got three very important things to tell you about that made this episode possible. The first being Mills Vintage, the greatest archive and store

for used vintage, hardcore punk and metal memorabilia on the whole of the internet. That's right. MillsVintageUSA.com. Go check it out. Search for any single band we've talked about in this episode or even last week's episode or the week before that. You're going to find something. You're going to go, I've never seen this before. How can I get it? And he's going to get it back at some point and you're going to want to be first. I may beat you. But I'm not always looking. I lose stuff on there all the time. I give him stuff all the time. You've got to be checking. If you're in L.A., if you're in New York, even just send him a message. You can trade stuff. You can. You can sell stuff, but most importantly, site-wide, code hardlore 10% off. And you know this stuff adds up. So you're going to need that code. Trust me. He also messages back like really fast. So if you have a question, he's got measurements.

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by Louder Than Life Fest. It's coming up. I'm turning 35 at this fest. I'll be there. And I want a cake. I want the candles. I want it all. But this lineup.

You hear me say like big rock festival lineup and you're probably like, I ain't going to that. But it's Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Alice Cooper, Pantera, Danzig, Machinehead, Guar, Jimmy Eat World, Alkaline Trio. And that's just one day. My Chemical Romance. Cohe. The used.

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Get your tickets now at louder than life festival.com. Back to the episode. So why did the higher four, before we get to 100 demons full speed, Higher Force had an LP recorded. Well, it was basically all the songs we ever recorded. Right. From different eras, from the beginning and not. 92 to

we went to the studio once me, Bubba Rich and Sean to record some songs in the first round of it we actually, they started smoking so much weed and I just started drinking. We didn't record any fucking higher four songs and we improv the whole fucking

record. We did eight songs of fucking lunacy. It might be some of the best stuff we've ever did in our lives. It's the best Connecticut and unreleased. never heard. Somehow it got titled Fancy Force.

Everyone was wasted. And I was never a giant partyer, but I remember vividly just drinking like a bottle of whiskey in the middle of like a Saturday afternoon in the studio. And these guys were just and we're trying to record our four songs and Sean just started strumming on a guitar and I just started singing. And the next thing you know,

it became like an eight song like underground hit. Yeah. It's awesome. And one of the songs is what's called Jeremy, where I sing to Bubba. His real name is Jeremy. And it goes something like, Jeremy, I just want to make sweet love to you. And I was looking deep into his eyes.

And it's like a three minute long, beautiful ballad. And it's perfect. We'll never be able to replicate that again. But it's caught on tape, and we have it. And it's really good. And we did all these other songs. And someday it's going to happen. Greg, Silver Bullet, has the dat.

And one day we're going to, it's going to get out there. You hear that? It's incredible. There are very few records or bands that are left to like secret now, you know, when you hear, like when we were younger, people would say, you know what Eddie Leeway sang on the Marauder demo and you'd have to find these things. But now with the internet, there's just nothing is left like that. And this is like one of the few things that are left.

So over the years, we did get all these. The next time we went back, we did make an accomplishment and record the next batch of the next batch of songs, but we have, you know, I think there's 13 songs. A lot of them never have never seen the light of day outside of getting snuck online somewhere. And possibly on the Plex. I don't know. Yeah. I'm just going to. Maybe. So your first order of business in Hunter Demons, or I don't know if it's your first order of business, self-titled. Yeah. Is right around the corner. Yeah. A decade-defining classic. a light in the dark

for what was to come in hardcore the next few years. Tell us about writing for Hunter Demons for the first time and putting this record together. Yeah, it was, I think it was, I was so familiar with these guys, obviously, from playing together for years.

It came pretty easy. The first round, just learning all the original songs, you know, shaking the rust off with them and singing. Actually, it was a little bit of different singing, too. You know, it was even more harsh than higher force.

There was no melody whatsoever. singing harder. But we started playing the shows and getting... And did you like in the eyes of the lower when it came out? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. How could you not? Yeah, of course. I mean, I knew all the songs. I knew half of them from just liking it. Being familiar because they were higher force. Oh, yeah. True.

I think at least three, maybe four were. Once I joined and we started talking about a record, we started writing. For some reason, I can't really remember writing a lot of it. It wasn't like a blur or anything, but I think it just happened really fast. We did a lot of work in the studio, too.

I remember specifically, though, doing repeat process because it was very conflicting for me. I was like, is this selling out? I'm singing like melodic, and a lot of like the metalcore bands at the time were doing that sing, scream kind of thing. And I was like, people might fucking hate this or make fun of us. But I was like, it just feels so natural and normal to do this, you know? How did the band feel about it? They loved it. Yeah, it's fucking awesome. They were all like, this is, this is it, dude. Like, this is great.

And it still wasn't a super clean voice, you know. It was still, like, rough and kind of raspy. And I had friends were like, you sound like Paul Deano from Iron Maiden. I was like, I don't hear it. But I would still get that a lot, you know. I remember recording, especially that song with Zeus, and he had a great time doing it. We did some cool stuff.

I remember, like, we did multi-tracks on it where I would do like an octave lower and almost like a speaking voice than a lower singing voice. But when the singing came out for, everyone was just like, do, this rules. It's hard to not. Yeah. And then there were other singing parts, like dying in my own arms, like a melodic. Yeah. Yeah.

As my vocal cords thickened off to us, got so hard to sing, like, some of those songs. And I could still do repeat process pretty good. But some of those screams in there, I'm like, how in the fuck? How did I do that? That's great. And are you part of the music writing process as well? Like, are you like, oh, that would be singing? More, like, arranging?

not like I don't write riffs. You know, I could mouth, sometimes I would mouth riffs, you know, or move stuff around like that. Definitely always part of like arrangements, though. That's important. Yeah. It is. One of the greatest hardcore lyrics ever written,

I don't need the drugs because the rage gets me high. Yeah. I didn't say I won't do them, though. That would be a lie. How did you not win a Pulitzer for that? I don't know. It's crazy, right? Bruce and I were so different.

friend and he leaned heavy on a lot of like his experiences in life you know and I never had any battles with like addiction or but I had a lot of battles with fucking rage and anger and it was like an issue for me growing up you know I'd have any outlet for it I was a very angry person I still am but not nearly as I used to me and I just my drug was anger you know I would sometimes almost like blackout rage anger you know like be done I'm standing there and I'm underwear like bloody knuckles like him trashed the whole fucking room you know and I don't know why something this small would just set me off that's like the you know when you hear old Connecticut stories and you'd hear old Pete stories that's that's the basis of them would be like

the Hulk is in the room and nobody can stop it but like that lyric just came to me it was no thought you know it was there and I was like this makes so much sense to me high and live finally being rhymed you know unbelievable stuff truly one of the rare bands in history where a guy replaces the front man and everybody's like yeah we accept this this is cool this is the right guy i think that was also because the people that were around knew me from higher force too and it was just like interchangeable you know um just so happened i've done that in two countries big large bands now too. And both times, it's been like, yeah, that's the right guy. Have been greeted with, like, a lot of positivity, you know, so I'm very lucky on that end, you know.

But I think it's a lot because of like they're, you know, like you said, everybody was just still friends. Yeah. There's no, like, obvious drama behind the singer change. We had, like, a very tight circle of friends where, you know, no matter what, everyone was always, like, there for each other. Yeah. If someone couldn't do something or didn't want to do it, someone else would pick up a slack, you know? was yeah Bruce is gone now yeah Pete's just gonna I mean we went back and forth maybe two or three times with Bruce and I you know yeah and it was never any issue I remember like this the first time

I left 100 demons was we were I was wanting to write a record for a long time you know because we were just touring a lot you know we go to Europe a lot we're doing a lot of 30 40 day tours and I was like we got to write a record and it just wasn't happening so I got another offer to do like a tour in Europe and I committed to it and I think it from what I remember I told everyone in the band and we're like yeah we're gonna do it and then once I committed to it the guys were like we're not doing this we're not go do another tour and I was like well it's either that or we write a record I got a little mad and I was like I'm fucking done you know and it wasn't even an anger thing like I was mad for like weeks or anything it was just in the moment and I just felt like just burnt on it

because it was like stagnant you know so I left and Bruce came back you know and uh Is Hunter Demons the first time where you're touring heavily? Yeah. Describe those first few tours for me. I think the first real big tour we did, it was like us in like full-blown chaos. It was like a 30 or 40-day tour, maybe give or take a week from everywhere, starting on the East Coast all the way to West Coast and in between. And it was cool, man. It was the first time I really played all these different states.

full-bone chaos took us out on that but since they've already did some national tours but I think like a few shows into it we swapped the order of the lineup

because you know we just had a lot of like fans that never saw us and you know and this record is and it was chaos and that record came out and people really did enjoy it you know It had a lot of positivity towards it, and it was bringing out more and more people, you know.

Any stories or hijinks that come to mind? I'm sure there's a million of them, but we were pretty mellow for the most part. It was, you know. I believe that. It really was, though. I don't think there was, like, any, like, true insanity. Well, what I consider insanity, you know what I mean.

And to most of us, like a, some fight to somebody could be like a life-defining moment. Yeah, yeah. Right. The guy getting beat up, it will remember forever. It's just an everyday thing. You come just hardened to it or cold towards it. Nothing. I don't know, you know.

I can't think of anything right offhand at the moment. Okay. What about touring Europe? Farring Europe was cool. We did a lot of tours over there. Yeah. How were those? They were all good for the most part.

There was, obviously, sometimes you're like, You don't feel like you're leaving Germany. You know, you'll go there for like a month, and you're, like, in Germany for 22 days. It just never ends. Do you like touring? I do, and I don't, you know. I had some really great, fun times touring.

But the older I got, the less I wanted to do it, you know. You're a big homebody, right? I am. I enjoy being home. You're also just a big guy. Touring at that size. It's hard. I had some great times, you know.

I never said no. You know, as time progressed with demons, and we started playing less and less, and we turned kind of like into like a festival kind of band, you know, so we were only playing a few times a year. And I said, I'll never tour again, but I don't think that's going to stick, you know. It's already, it's already like,

with both these bands, I've got commitments to do some longer. I was like, never more than two or three shows, and then I did four shows, and then can you do shableness? shows and can you do two weeks and next thing you know it's yeah it's gonna happen again well welcome back but I'm very happy to do it you know yeah you're doing more than ever now yeah his father's son yeah any hesitance to put something so personal yeah there was there was um I grew up with divorced parents my dad was around and by no means do I despise my father I just don't think he did a

a great job as being a dad. And he's around, and he's part of the family. And at that time, I think I was really angry over just a lot of things, you know, not having what I wanted in a parent, you know, weren't to accept it, you know, and he's a great grandfather, and he's a, I know he's a good person. It just wasn't a great husband to my, to my mother, and it wasn't a great father, but I don't think you knew how to be, you know. There's just a time we grow up and we become cognizant that like,

oh, my parents are people. Yeah. They're regular people. And then you think about everything you went through and you're like, I mean, I would have done that different. And then you get to another point in your life where you're like, I kind of get why he did that. Yeah.

Yeah. So I better know like ill well, but, you know, the song is pretty biting. Yeah. You know, and maybe some. Has he heard it? Have you talked to him about it? No, I don't think he's heard. it too, you know.

He loves the band. He always, he's like a permanent. That's the track. He's like, somebody else's father. He's 85 years old. He's a permanent substitute teacher at a high school. He looks like he's 60. Wow.

He is everyone's favorite teacher in the school. Is he tall? He sends kids to my tattoo shop to get tattooed all the time. He's always bragging about 100 demons and hate breed because of Sean. He's like, you know. My son Sean's in this. Yes. You know.

But he's everybody's friend, you know, and that's, that was him his whole life, you know. The responsibility of doing the bigger things wasn't there, you know. And I accepted it, you know, so we're cool. And doing something like this is how have you accepted. You know, writing a song like this that, A, is this good, but be so personal helps you kind of look at it. Over the years, you wouldn't believe how many people have come up to me and like thanked me for that. Because they related to it so much. and it gave them strength to get over a lot of the bad shit that happened.

Shit, that was way worse than it was with me. You know what I mean? Even up in Tacoma, I had a kid come up to a really nice kid and told me how much that song really means to him, and it's helped him through a lot of really bad, dark times in his life, you know. To hear that, a song that I wrote 22 years ago and it's still resonating with people, teenagers, you know, it's pretty cool. Tell you a guy who that song resonated with.

man right there good man good man i wish we could have talked about it together yeah we talked about together yeah that's great to hear i knew we loved the i knew he loved that bass drop at the end on the new album there's a song called cold wind on the crossroads which i was fortunate enough to sing on and write a little part four and when we talked about the song in prep the way you explained it in my mind was like, oh, he just wrote the sequel to his father's song. Yeah. It's almost that feel to it, you know. But instead now, like with this family of your own trying to

navigate how not to inherit these negative aspects that you've attributed to your father and your family who came before you, how was putting that together. It was like, that just flowed, man. That song was like exactly what you said. It's like, I want these lyrics to

try to stay on the correct path and not inherit it. every bit of the bad that is in like a family member, you know, and how to avoid that and stay on track and be the best that you can be, you know. It's a battle. I could easily fall into traps where I'm not going to be a good husband or a good father. And I don't ever want to be that way, you know. I want to be, I want to give my kids everything I know.

Listen, I had the best mother in the world. She's my best friend. She's my mother, my father, my everything, you know. And I want to be a father to my kids like no other, you know. And it got to the point where I was like probably being too cool and spoiling the hell out of it and getting, like indulging everything, you know. I've eased up on that. But, you know, it's easy sometimes to fall into these traps of things that are just so ingrained in you. You know, you have to fight them.

And it's a struggle still to this day, you know, not to fall into these negative spaces and just be the best you can be, you know. And they're just going to keep growing and get to know you as a guy and not just a father. And going back to that song, like I wrote your part for you. And when you said, can I, you know, do my own thing and write someone, I trusted you, obviously.

And what you did, man, it blew, me away. Thanks, man. Because lyrically, it was so beautiful, and there were so many little Easter egg callbacks, you know, hitting like... I'm a fan first. I know, and that's what I would have never have thought like that. And you connected those two songs together

with those lyrics and just like with these little hits of like either lyrically with the words that I wrote or like vocal inflections that I did in songs. And it was so... When I first heard that, you left me here to Rott Line, I was like, I got chills, man. That's me! I was like, did you hear

Do you hear what he did? You know? And you and Taylor on there were just like, it was one of my favorite moments on the whole record, man. And I ended the part with eternity of hate as that's a song on the Last God's Hate record that Brody and I wrote together. That's literally about the same thing.

Yeah. Where it's not wanting his son or his daughter to inherit his rage. So it's like... Yeah, a perfect circle, man. Yeah. Bringing the whole family in it. Love it.

Love it. As the official winner of Hard Lord's Hardest Band of All on that. How do you feel upon time of recording after finishing the record and every, like the whole band listening to the master back? Yeah, we knew it was something special as it was going on. This was a very unorthodox way we did this record. I've never did anything like it in this way. We only had maybe two songs written before we started. Really? Yeah. We wrote most of these, Probably 85% of this record in the studio, or like at practice and then pieced them in the studio.

Wow. And we were doing three or four songs at a time, two songs at a time in chunks. And, you know, the first song, we actually recorded way more than what's on that record, too. We did like 17 songs. One of them is actually an old higher four song, too. We're all going to die, which we redid.

And it was going to come out later with some other tracks. But we piece these songs together at Greg's. and got through them knowing full well. Once the first batch were done, we're going to go back in there and do my part with them, you know. And that's it. I worked on it with Greg in such a way that it became like this method. I felt like we'd discover our method of truly working together.

Had the best experience on my life recording. I'll never record anywhere else with anyone else. I probably will, but I don't want to. Yeah. And the way we did it, I don't. don't want to ever deviate from that path because if you're comfortable you're coming it was so good like how we did this you know and um when it was all done and finished i was like i think we really did something following up a record after 22 years isn't an easy feat very tough and you see a lot of bands

that put out a record after 20 years and it could be a fucking joke that's the curse most of the time people do that there's very and i'm not too in my own horn and i never boost myself up to another I really do feel it's an excellent follow-up to a record and right where we should be. It's almost like we could have put out two other records in between this and it would have led up still to this record. You know what I mean? You skipped right to it.

I feel like the important reason, or however you want to say it, is you guys all sort of stayed in touch with things. You never, most of the times the bands come back and put out new records. Yeah, so-and-so got married. I went here, I stopped playing music. They're not around.

All of us are still involved in music and still are at shows and know what's going on currently. And I think that's a huge part of it. It's like when people look at terror. I mean, terror has been a band forever. Forever. And they still just put out just amazing record, amazing record. And it's because they're just in touch with everything.

They don't lose touch with what's going on. It doesn't matter how old the band is. It just matters like where they are mentally in that. And it's like you can kind of tell. and you listen to this record that you're still very much in touch with the scene. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah.

Do you experience people going into 100 Demon sets thinking they're going to be so scary and violent that they don't participate in fear and end up, the set ends up being completely fine because of it? The band over the years has had so much positive and negative. It's going to be so fucking crazy. Like, you know, ambulances are outside and hospitals are going to be overflowing to mass capacity. And this, and listen, there's been violence. There's been hard-moshing at demon shows. But then you're, but then it's like, yeah, what the, but a lot of times we play that's just like, listen, I've always had the fantasy of being that guy that's in a band that has 30 people deep

and there's not a giant horseshoe. Yeah. Yeah. And I've been getting that experience recently doing it with blood for blood, you know what I mean, where there's just massive sing-alongs. And that's kind of filling like a hole for me. It's like the forced reality prophecy coming. I love the sing-along.

And I love, and we get it with demons too on certain songs, but still, the moshing gets so crazy and out of hand. The back row is like, you know, 300 feet away. There's just giant open area. And I get it. People don't want to get hit. And we have some ignorant people. Yeah.

They're proud sometimes. They're trying to outdo each other. But if you're in there, you're fine. You just must to survive. Yeah. Yeah. If there's a PSA I can have in this episode, it would be don't ever go up to a band and be like, dude, it's going to be crazy.

Oh, listen, when we announced the record release show, how many posts did you see? This is the most ignorant show ever. No, it's not. People are going to die. Yeah. You know. Why? But people feed off that.

Like, they love it, but they're not. They love it in theory. They love it on the internet. Then when you go to play the show, everybody's like, scared. Terrified. Yeah. And it's really nothing out of the, like, like they portray it to be. Yeah.

Backups on the self-titled were done by E-Rock. Oh, yeah, Biggie. That's there. Mr. Sean Schitt. Yep. Is that Sean Martin? Yep. J. X. Shysa?

Shise. Jay Smith. Jiz. Smith. Shisler, Shiza. He's like a friend of the band. He did a lot of tours with us, like, in Europe. sold merch for us. Like, great guy. Pooch the Rappin' Dog?

Uchi, John Poochie, singer of Tyrant Trooper. Okay. Death metal band that Big Rick was in. Grippo, I'm assuming this is Ben. Yeah. Has to be. Yeah. Which shout out, Ben.

What's crazy is I don't remember any of these guys doing this. I don't remember any of it. Gumby? You got the Aaron Brass. Okay. And Joe was there? And last but not least, Joe Dush. Joe Dush?

I'm going to be honest, this just sounds like someone took the liner notes and just made jokes. Joe Duce did backing vocals on her record? Who's Joe Dush? Well, Joe Dush is a real person. Yeah. Can you tell me about a guy? Can you talk about Larry Dwyer for a little bit? Larry Dwyer's great.

He's like, he's a beautiful man. I feel like he's like king of the center of every, like, Connecticut hijinks. He's been in a lot of good hijinks. You see, you know, Larry's like one of the original members of Hey Preet and him and Dave Rousseau. They're both in my, we had a band called Ig and then turn into Ig fits at our Halloween show. It's coming. And we're all, it's one of my favorite bands to play in. It's just because it's so easy and fun, it's just never a stress.

We practice maybe four times a year before Halloween and go out and play. And Larry's been, you know, he's been a death threat. And he's just an all-around fun guy. But he used to, he's very different, not different, but he's much more reserved than he used to be. You know, he would be in the mix, like, just doing stupid. Well, you show me a video of him doing the Cinnamon Challenge. Yeah, so. And while it's funny, he also maybe did the best job I've ever seen.

He, multiple spoonfuls. And then I, we got him. No call. That was so crazy. Everyone was at this part, exoskeletons play. They, you know, exoskeletons were, you know, they, you know, they, played one of like a rare show and i was at a house party in connecticut it was full on fucking like early 2000s rager and this is already after the larry barry dweyer gets branded incident

which happened at my house which is another extremely hilarious video you branded him yeah with a red hot poker that was sitting in the fire for like hours hours i put it on his raw ass and he's like ah then i hit him again then i dragged it down his whole ass cheek you could see the skin just peeling away. You had to go to the emergency room. I think he got like $83 for it. Yeah, so, I mean, at the time, he thought it was worth it. Cool, cool, cool.

But if we started doing the same thing, what will Larry do for money? You know, we do the cinnamon challenge? I don't want to do the cinnamon challenge. The Connecticut shoe noise. So we got the first spoonful in his mouth. I think we gave him a second one. And then, like, people started pulling out bills. You see Wes Isles in this video?

He's like, yeah, he's like, I got the 20. Next, you know, he smashed more in his face. And then as he's like trying to put it down, you just see like cinnamon start hitting him from all angles. It's like dripping off his coat. It's in his mouth. He's like dying. Dave Rousseau.

And they're like best friends as wasted. And he's like, Larry Dwyer's a fat apple pie, you know? It's just super fun. Yeah. He's a good sport. I'm glad we can immortalize Larry DeWire right now. Yeah.

Are you glad that the New Hundred Demon's record took 22 years? Yeah, I think so. I don't think it could have been like this any other way. Yeah. You know. Because there have been, it's been close. Yeah, we, there were multiple times where we started writing. And it's just kind of like, even with Bruce, they had a few new songs.

Yeah. They were good. Yeah. And we recycled a couple riffs and maybe one complete song out of that batch. And we had that drop the hammer song, which I know what I'll call Hexon Hammer. Yep. Second single. Yep.

It's funny because, you know, we did the first three singles. They would have been, none of those songs would have. have been songs I would have released as singles. And I wasn't opposed to it. It just happened that way. And they're all really solid in their own way. But man, I can't wait for people to hear the rest of that record. It'll be out. At the time of release, it's been out. I hope you're all enjoying it because it's so good. How have you changed as a person, a vocalist and a lyricist from between self-titled and enjoy? As a vocalist, I'm always on a quest to better myself and so I really didn't put much work and thought until a lot of my vocals over the last few years

because I wasn't doing much but now that I'm back in the mix I actually sought out some help with a vocal coach what just got in touch with recently and I'm going to be working with her actually starting tomorrow you know she's going to be doing my warmups with me before every show and I'm going to start some lessons with her when I get back you're going to drop the name what's that You're going to drop her name? Oh, yeah, she's like the goat. She is a cross who's like a very well-known in our world of like heavy music and metal and hardcore. And she's come up with some of the best techniques in heavy music, you know,

and some of the best terminologies, which she's created, which had become like brand name words now, you know, that started with her. A couple weeks ago, I was looking together. her contact and Ian that's in Bud for Blood with me, his good friends with Jesse from, Kill Switch and Gage and he knew he went to talk with her. So he got his contact. Jesse told Ian that she was like life changing for him, you know, and I needed this because I'm going to be playing multiple shows again. And I've said, sensitive voice. I want to figure out the way to do this properly because I never, as I went years ago to get vocal training, but I just went in a different path.

So I was never able to figure out these, like, core principles of, like, sustaining my voice for heavy, heavy music. Right. So anyways, I got in touch with her finally. We had our first conversation last week. We got on the phone. I told her, like, my history, you know, she was actually really excited to know that I sang classical music.

She's like, oh, you're going to, you're already there. You already know half the stuff that you need to know. And she's like, let me tell you a little history. I started in Connecticut. I was like, oh, you started in Connecticut. That's crazy. And she's like, yeah, in the early 90s, my first student was Ian Keeler.

That Ian Keeler is Ian from the band Dismay, which is like, you know, a great old Connecticut band. He passed away as well. A great friend of mine. And she was involved with Ian and Morgan Walker, who ran a studio, like, right over the border in New York. And like, all these people from the early 90s in Connecticut, those were her first students.

And once I told her, I was like, Ian's my dude, you know. We just started chatting more and more and made quick friends fast. Cool. You know, and she's been, I haven't done any true first lessons with her yet, but we've been on multiple calls already. She's already giving me a lot of information. She's going to work with me tomorrow and Saturday, like pre-show,

just like giving me some warm-ups and help. And she's like, you're already there. She's like, watch the live videos of Blood for Blood, like the most current stuff. She's like, Pete, you're already there. You sound great. You just need, like, you're, like. You, what's the word? I don't know, basically to sustain through the set.

You need more muscle work with your chops. Show me a thing or two after she shows you a thing or two. And also, maybe one time. On the newest record, Embrace the Black Light. I would say you traded in a lot of the fuck you and I. Yep. And embrace, you're an occult guy. Yeah.

Yeah. The only thing you collect more than Star Wars stuff is occult objects, I would say. I mean, it's always been an object of my interest, even at a young age, you know. Lyrically, this record's, it's just more mature, you know. It's been... I didn't write a lot of songs about, like, fighting and smashing, you know, but a lot of people always thought 100 Demons was that. They put it sometimes in this, like, category of, like, a beat-down, tough guy band.

Just because the dudes are big and tough, doesn't mean. anywhere of that like yeah just because we're beating you down yeah I mean and there were you know Bruce wrote violent some violent type lyrics but not fully and they were they were from an emotional from an emotional place you know and and same with me too you know but I never considered any of the lyrics like ignorant no 100% even or gratuitous towards violence yeah or anything um but with this record I took my time and actually I I my friend Max Morton was him and I kind of co-wrote a bunch of songs together too, you know. Incredible writer.

Yeah, he's excellent, excellent. And my process for writing is I come up with song titles first. I write on my phone, I have like fucking 400 song titles, you know? And sometimes I think of these diabolical names or just like some really simple, simple stuff. Or I'll take like quotes I hear from people talking or even a movie and it'll turn into a title or it'll turn into like, a topic, you know. And that's how I started writing this record. And at first, I was like, shit, I haven't written a song in years. Like, how am I going to do this? And as I'm trying to work on the record, Mike Gettings from the band Solis, and my buddy Allen, they were writing

music. And he's like, dude, do you think you could help me write a song? I was like, dude, I can't even write a song for my own band right now, you know? I was like, all right, let's do it. I go, come out over my house. And he comes over. And within 30 minutes, I have a song written for him. Yeah. You know, I wrote that new single that they just put out, called The Promise. It's very skinhead. It's very oi.

It's very forced reality. But I banged it out. It's fucking great song. And that literally kickstarted me to writing the New Hundred Demons record. Wow. It just opened up my brain, you know? And that was like really, it was fun to do that. And it was mindless, you know,

not saying the lyrics are mildless. Just came easy to me because that's like the world I came from from writing, you know. But it literally kickstarted me. It's the next thing you know, within a week, I had like four demon songs written already. And then it was six, and then it was like eight. And I was like, hey, Max, you want to help me out, man? Here's an idea I have.

And he would write a few lines or paragraphs, and then I'd re-edit it into my own way, you know. I gave him credit on the record because he did help me a lot, you know. And he has a way of crafting words sometimes that I would never think of in my own brain. So it was a great help. But a lot of the lyrics do touch on, you know, death and destruction, but in a very esoteric kind of way, you know,

in otherworldly. Mature. Yeah. You did a podcast called The Stockbury Dark. Yeah. I was on it. It was great. I would like to know canonize forever.

Yeah. Maybe your most undeniable haunting story. For myself. I mean, I don't want to sound like a kook, I guess, but I've definitely had experiences. I do believe in ghosts. I don't know what they are. Maybe it's just frequency or it's just energy that's left behind,

but there's too much unexplained, too many unexplained things. But my first, like, I mean, I have so many of them, man. The one that's going to leave me here, goosebumps. Well, I can go into, well, anyways, I'll tell you a couple of things. of things like years ago i bought a house my first house i ever bought you know it was a two-family house in waterbury it was a piece of garbage it paid you know like a hundred thousand dollars for

it was my house i was going to live there i was going to rent out another spot and and um ended up gutting the whole house it started with a bedroom i don't know what i'm doing in this situation either you know but i started gutting a room in this house next thing you know a week later like the whole second and third four is down to the beams and rafters and there's a dumpster outside. I'm like, what am I doing? You know, pulled everything out, wiring windows, blah, blah, blah. But got it all built up. Me and my friends did everything, you know.

And this is months later passes and I'm getting ready to move back in there. And I remember I just got like furniture moved into the living room on the second floor. And I'm just sitting there and I felt so accomplished. No TV in there yet. I was like, I'm going to be moving in here very soon. This is right when I started dating my wife, Shannon. Legend. And I'm sitting in the living room.

Well, we just preface this with this. After I bought the house and I was working on it, the neighbors across the street, wonderful people, they still live there. They're like, oh, you're the new tenant? You know, that house is crazy. Had so many different parties and people that live there, you know? She's like, I used to even party there when I was a kid.

It's old house. You know, it's from like your early 1900s. And as we're finishing the conversation, she's like, they told you what happened there, right? This is the start to every horror movie. I was like, shame about what happened to those. Yeah, it's exactly that. I was like, what happened there?

And she's like, oh, well, so John that lived in the house, he was a wonderful man, Vietnam veteran, he committed suicide in that room right there. And I was like, oh, well, that's terrible. you know, didn't think much of it. And she's like, people say they see things. Oh, God. An old gypsy outside talking to.

Flash for like, you know, eight months. And I'm sitting there after redoing everything. And it's like probably nine, ten o'clock at night. And I'm just sitting on the couch and there's no lights on, no TV. And where I am in the living room, there's like, to the left, there's like a long hallway. And there's an attic space, which I turn into the master. and there was a couple other rooms behind the living room. I just see, like, it looked like a black image,

like a shadowy figure. And it was like slowly walking towards me. And as it was getting closer in the hallway, I'm just like squinting watching it. It started moving like something like out of a movie, like the ring or almost like spider-like. It was like these, and it started moving to the side of the wall and it started coming towards me.

And I'm just sitting there on the couch. And I was like, Walk this. And I just got up and I ran out of the house. I locked the door. Call my call Shannon. I was like, something's up in that house. She's like, what do you mean?

I was like, I think it's haunted. Like I feel something. I'm seeing things. Like, I just had one of the weirdest experiences. And I explained it, you know. And are you already into this stuff before this happens? Yeah, I'm like, I'm always interested in it. But I'm not like willing it to happen.

Sure. You know, it was like the furthest thing from my mind. Oh. And she believe you when you tell me? At first, I think. think she didn't. Not, no, it's probably something else, you know. But as I moved in there, like the thing's like,

started getting a little weirder, you know. I moved in. The whole cast of characters lived on the first floor, you know, so many different friends from like Larry Barcello and my buddy Ray and my buddy Sean and probably 30 different tenants over the years, you know. It was like the hardcore house, my first house. I would have, that's when I started getting sleep paralysis a lot in that house.

That'll get you. And my sleep paralysis stories get crazy, but these early ones were like, you know, I would see shadowy figures on the third floor. I'd feel like someone creeping into the bed next to me and like whispering in my ear. I could feel their body pressing up against me. So it would really creepy stuff.

And a lot of the times I just kept it to myself. And, but there were times now where I'd be on tour with demons. We'd be in Europe. Then I'd get a call from like Larry. He's like, yo, you home? I'm like, no. I mean, fucking Holland, dude, what's wrong?

He's like, you're not home right now. I was like, no, why? He's like, every window and every light is on in the house. I just got home. All your windows are open. All the lights are on. I was like, well, can you go shut them? Like, what's going on?

He's like, I don't know, dude. But it sounds like someone's up there. And for like multiple times he'd hear people. like running around in the like in the floorboards above them and like noises and and and then i've had frank three gun came on your show he's talking about a haunted house that's what that's my house okay he had he had a ghostly experience there okay he didn't want to say my name on the show but that was one of them multiple people that visited dray had a ghost story there right from donny brook and all the a lot of people that live there had a lot of just really weird experiences i'm gonna talk about

something I haven't talked about on the show yet as this the show's only been back for a few weeks now this guy paid me a visit in his apartment yeah uh I'm gonna break it down I called you right after it happened because I knew you believe me yep so am I I told you this already right yeah I told you I believe so yeah I was there you were yeah you were there so uh before Beau's Memorial at the Chicago Metro this beautiful thing put together by Arms Way Taylor, Wendy the Metro so many people helped out it was amazing We were getting together his stuff for the stage

It was gonna it was a door you could see in the photos it was adorn with with all his gear and a bunch of shirts It was just this beautiful thing was perfect on both sides of the stage where there's two clothing racks. And you guys already know this, but it's still, it's the best. And one side, the original vision for this memorial was one side was going to be classic, iconic Boe, vintage shirts. One side was going to be Bose bands. So myself, Chris Mills and his partner Taylor, went to the apartment to, we had specific goals in mind of like, all right, we need the Danzig tea. We need a Morrissey tea. We need a Typo tea. You need New York tea. and we need this metallic shirt with the eagle on it.

He's wearing it on this fucking doll that he made of himself. It's the shirt he sent the doll artist to be wearing. So I'm like, all right, we got to find this metallic shirt with the eagle on it. And I'm going to put a picture in so that you can see it. Bo had a proprietary shirt assortment system that is the dumbest thing you've ever seen. This is why his shoulders were so big, because every day his shirts in his room were hung like an H&M. So it's this fucking pipe that goes around his whole bedroom

with a museum worth of like $500. These hardcore T-shirts and metal T-shirts. And they're all color-coded. So the white shirts have a very small section over here and then there's 500 black shirts over here. So we find almost everything. And I'm like, all right, well, we still need the white, Youth of Today shirt, we still need this metallic shirt with the eagle. And then there's a whole

section of Metallica shirts on the left. So I'm combing through the whole thing extensively. And it's like, it ain't showing up. So I'm about to give up. And I ask Taylor, hey, have you seen this metallic shirt with the eagle? And I show this horrific picture of him wearing it that he hated. Here it is. And she says, I've never seen him wear that. And I've never seen it in this. department so I give up officially it's like all right on to the white youth of today's shirt it is get to the white shirts get to the middle of the white shirts and a black object falls into my hands folded up and I just like just dropped right dude it felt like legit like I didn't reach for it yeah I was doing this with the thing and it just goes boop and like before I open it I know you just knew

it was and I open it up and it's the metallic shirt with the eagle and I just just stand there and I go, yeah. And I'm like, thank you, Bo. And I call Taylor and Chris in the room. Because the whole time I was saying, like, you can't find the shirt. This sucks. And I just standing there, I'm going, oh, my God! Oh, my God!

Come in here. And it was the shirt. And then during the memorial, this is another fun one, but we'll get to the shirt in a second. During the memorial, right before giving the eulogy on stage, that was when I, like, really, it really hit me. Because it was like, all right, I got to talk about this guy. I have to summarize this guy's life in a few minutes after his uncle did the worst. The worst.

And let me tell you, the most poetically poetic thing of all time is that at his funeral, his uncle gave the most dog shit speech in history. And it was perfect. It was so bad that there was people so silently booing. Everybody was like Chris Mills shaking with rage. but realizing in the moment, like, oh, we're witnessing, like, the final poetic bow moment, which is beautiful. And so I'm, like, weeping crying before, before giving this eulogy that is online.

So I go down to the green room in the metro, and I'm just trying to talk to him. We're going, show me, show me, show me you're here, show me with me, because I felt them. And I felt my eyes drawn to the capacity of the green room. which was 138. And I just stood there and went, and then went upstairs, gave the speech, and during the memorial,

it was decided that he had too much cool, Harm's Way, double-crossed merch, et cetera. So it was all that, it was all his stuff, and then just the one metallic shirt. And then everybody said,

all night, as they looked at it, it turned to them. In this haunted room, that we investigated just months prior. So, Bo, thank you for letting me know. That's like beyond coincidence kind of stuff. It's, it's, it's,

it's, go surreal, and the guy who denied it finally told me. He gave you the message. He gave it to me. So thank you, Bo. How is it having Sean back in a hundred demons and finally being in a band with him again? It's awesome. It's been a long time coming.

We've always talked about this over the years, like how we've been, you know, we played together on and for the longest time. We've supported each other's bands, but we've never, like, rudely traveled with each other, never toured with each other,

never did any other. Other than being mutually miserable on vacation together. But the thing is, the thing is this, vacations or any time we're together, it's like this weird rule we have. Only one of us could be like that, because the other one props up the other guy. If Sean's, like, acting up,

I'm the guy's like, hey, man, what's the matter? We call it no more mad times. Which Greg, when we were recording, heard me say that, and he thought it was the most insane, hilarious thing that he's getting a tattooed on his leg. No mad times. No mad times. And we, because we figured if both of us ever in a mood like that together,

what does that do? Game over. Yeah. No one's having a good time. Literally. We both have the capability of walking into a room and, like, dictating the mood, like the energy. And it's not because we're like mean or fierce, whatever.

It's just like, we're emotional guys. We can carry this heavy emotional thing, you know? There's been so many times. I've walked into a room in a shit room and everyone's having a good time within three minutes no one's talking you know and I'm just like sitting there stewing like an asshole and I realized it's like baby behavior I just couldn't get a grasp on it and Sean is the same thing but Sean is so conscious of it yeah where he'll go I'm insane yeah don't you just don't even he has explosive he's like you're perfect you're wonderful he's been great in the last couple years though he's

kind of made a lot of big moves and sometimes I look at him where I think about him I tear up yeah that's the best guy of all the time yeah he's the best he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's He's absolutely up there as a bus. Like, I'm so happy to, like, be able to do this with him now at this point in our lives, too. It's beautiful. And then finally, like, making this crazy record with him. Yeah. He played, he wrote a lot of it and played guitar all of it.

We've been wanting to do it forever. And when Eric, our bass player, passed away, you know, a couple years ago, within a few months, Sean came up to reach. She's like, I want to play in 100 demons, you know? And it was just like a piece of the puzzle that just came together. And I was like, fuck, man. This is it, we're doing it, you know? The band was at a point where we were just playing a couple times of years. And I was like, I was like, guys, what's the point?

We're playing off literally two records for the last 25 years. If we're going to do this, let's give it one last go. This is already after I said I was done playing music multiple times, you know. But it just felt too good, especially with Sean back in the fold. I was like, let's give it a go and just do this record. and whatever happens happens, you know? And it turned out to be like, you know, incredible writing experience and recording experience

and the offers and shows have been coming in. And you did it with Justin, my beloved, a close casket? Close casket is like no other. You know, Justin's awesome. We didn't really know each other before that, you know? And he's a very kind of like, I'm not going to say introverted. but he keeps him to himself.

But as soon as I got to know him, I felt like we were friends forever, and we talk a lot. He's been nothing but great for the band. He believes in everything we're doing, and he's giving us everything we want, you know? It's a great, great label. Agreed.

Couldn't it be more excited. I'd rather be on that label than any major or anything like that, because it's so personal and it's real. And he's just as good. good as being on that with more care for the bands, you know. It's awesome. Well said.

So now you enter this chapter in your life where you're busier than ever as a musician. And you've now joined the legendary Blood for Blood. Crazy. What happened there? How did this happen? So a few years ago, we were in talks of resurrecting Blood for Blood. and I was going to be the singer and we were going to come back,

record some songs, and the whole plan was going on. During that time, I was in a lot of pain. You know, I have a lot of, like, broken body parts, you know, joints, back, shoulders, blah, blah, blah. While we were recording and getting in talks of playing, my back was fucking destroyed. and it wasn't impeding me from making future plans

but it was just tough for me to get around. I was nervous. COVID hit. We were talking of playing and what COVID started. And we were all very clear with each other that, listen, we're not doing this. We're not going to tour. You know, we're going to play some shows.

You know, we're going to do some comeback shows, possibly play some festivals in America and Europe and see what happens. What about a record? Was that in the plans? Well, we started recording a couple songs and actually went back and redid living in exile and wasted youth crew. And I did all of Buddhist parts over, you know, there are new versions of the songs. Also did all fucked up. But it was like this cool, like a crew stick version of it, which sounded like, it was just awesome.

I think a lot of that came from Rob hearing murmur, and he almost kind of gave, like, want to do like a murmur style, like, song for that. Rightfully so. But, you know, we're talking with Rob during that time. He was like, P, I've always wanted you in blood for blood, especially after all the shit that happened, you know, when we were going to make our comeback before everything went down.

I always wanted you in the band. I always heard your voice singing these songs, you know. Uda did his job and did it well, but your voice was meant to do these songs justice. There was certain melodies that I always wanted to hear that he just couldn't do. So anyways, I went and recorded like three songs, and they were awesome.

They came out really good. Everyone was super happy with it. As we're moving along with that, we get an offer to do a persistence tour in Europe, which was like three weeks or something. I was like, dude, I really... I don't know if I could do three weeks, never mind. Like, it's coming up in like a month and a half.

And COVID hit. And I just don't know if I can do it because we never even got in a room together yet or practiced. And then a lot of, like, communication got misconstrued. And no one was talking for a while. And I haven't heard from anyone, but I'm not really seeking anyone out because I was in so much pain. I was, like, just, like, at home, like nursing my. myself back to life again, you know, just fucked up. And during that time, I think Rob went on Joe Hardcore's podcast,

and they started talking about blood for blood, and he made like a reference saying, yeah, we were talking about doing it again. But I don't think it's going to happen, and I don't think if it doesn't happen this time, it's never going to happen, you know? And then Joe called me up, he's like, did you hear that? And I'm like, no, I didn't listen to it,

but I was like, I was like disappointed hearing that, but I also was kind of relieved because I didn't know what was going on, you know. So it kind of goes over. It's you have a definite answer. Yeah. And it just faded away, you know, and none of us talked for a while, you know. Do you think that that Florida show, people might not know this, but there was like a two-day period where there was an announced Blood for Blood Show in like 20-22-ish. Yeah. This was all around that time. Right. We were going to start doing something. And I remember. I remember everybody being like, holy shit, we have to get to Florida now. Yeah.

And then it changed. And everybody was like, wait, what the fuck happened? Well, what happened was John was trying to get 100 demons to play. And we were talking about blood for blood too. And I said, demons can play, but I don't think blood for blood can. They haven't even talked to anyone yet. But for some reason, he got confused. When I said, well, do it, he thought blood for blood was doing it.

And then just all of a sudden, I started getting texts one morning. I'm like, yo, what the fuck is this? I'm like, look. and like, you announced blood for blood on a show in Florida. I was like, whoa, what the fuck? You know, I'm texting John. I was like, dude, what is this? This isn't true.

I was talking about 100 demons. He's like, oh, I was like, oh, take it down, you know. This is John Hollinger. Yeah, shout out, John. Shout out, John. Yeah, I love to see you. See you, John. I can't wait to see you.

But anyways, even Rob took it well, and he's like, maybe we should play it, you know. Oh, cool. Yeah, and I was like, oh, maybe we talked about it briefly, and it's just still faded away. And listen, there were no. hard feelings over any of this stuff either. It was just all miscommunication and we kind of drifted apart for a while and then it all started up like the last year again where you know

Jimmy was talking to Rob and Rob was thinking about resurrecting the band again and record you know recording and this and that and it just kind of all came together again where we kind of picked up where we left off we got in some conversations and we started talking as a unit again and this time it really did work, you know. And we worked our asses off for months. We practiced for months and got that first set down where we did the first show at Big Night Live. Yeah, why did you make me play after you? What the hell happened? I had nothing to do with that show. Who booked that show? That was Austin. I think it was awesome. Yeah. Wasn't me, man. God damn. Buried me. Buried me. Great set. It was probably not a smart decision on that. And just, you know,

a secret blood for blood show, you know, but I think that's how it was looked at. No one really knew what was I think it was cool. I think it was worth tune. It was amazing. It was a beautiful night, you know? You guys still played great. Yeah, I said on stage I was between the Beatles and a ways. I think the only band that could have followed us

at that point was probably Hey, well, you know what I mean? And they had a great set. Yeah. So it worked, now it's all been working out. Right now. We're all super tight and we're all good friends and it's been a fun ride, man. And Blood for Blood is a Connecticut hardcore band now.

It is. We've loaded the band up with like two full-time Connecticut people and a guy that plays in two great... He's honorary Connecticut hardcore, man. And the fourth strongest man in America, Big Justin. Here's a picture of him doing something insane. That was unbelievable. Walking around with like cars on his shoulders.

And then you got Robin Ian, the OG. So this beautiful dream team bringing back one of our favorite bands. It's really cool because... seeing all the comments, which, you know, the thing is I never really read much online, or even if there's negative shit, I don't let it bother me, but I've seen nothing but positive comments about the return of the band, you know. All the bullshit from the past is gone. Everyone thinks it's a really solid lineup.

The band sounds great, and everyone's truly happy. It doesn't feel like work, you know. We're actually good friends. We hang out with each other. It's like, I'm super grateful to be in the position I am right now. You had a good team, man. Two of these monster bands with all our friends behind us, managing it and booking us and working with us. It couldn't be any better.

It's made it playing out and agreeing to play multiple shows that much easier, you know. And you got a ton of shows booked this year and next year with two huge crowds. Yep. And let me tell you who should be playing the huge crowds right now. Who's that? A little band called Murmur. Pete, I think this is when we really bond. when we really bonded.

When the murmur record was being, guys, murmur the Boundless Black, pause this for about 38 minutes and listen to that whole thing and come back. This is one of the most beautiful records ever written. It is a deep personal favorite thing of mine. And the development of this,

you and I communicated through like the whole, like the whole thing. I heard every mix. All the stages of it. Every stage, dude. And like, you're super shredded right now. You're looking great. I was a fat piece of shit when you first sent me this record.

And by the time it was out, I was skinny because I learned running to Boundless Black is like the perfect tempo. Yeah. For when I get tired, it slows down. When I get hyped up again, it speeds up. Run to this record and you will look like Pete. I love that burner became an exercise record. It's usually, you know, it's usually 100 demons or hate breed. I don't need that.

I need like brain disengagement from the world, you know. I don't need to be fired up. I need to hear about the reeds. I need your children singing, you know? How cool is that? So cool. And that, like, how cool is that for you as it had? It was like, I cried.

I brought them to the studio and, like, listened to it and cried. And it was like... How was making that record? It's insane. Awesome. It was like nothing else. I wanted to do something like that for years. We actually had a band years ago, Sean and I,

and Bubba and a couple other guys. It was called The Big Sleep. Did I ever tell you about this? No. Oh, great name. I got to play you these songs. Please. That's where it started. The Big Sleep was an acoustic band.

We had like Woodwind instruments and keyboards, very mellow, laid back, like emotional, melancholy music, you know. And we record a few songs. Nothing ever got released. We had probably like 12 or 13 songs fully written. I have a couple different cassettes of like live recordings. We did at practice and we, we recorded. recorded a few in the studio, never did anything with them,

and then it kind of just faded away. And that was like what started my journey into like that genre of music, you know. What would you even call that, dark folk? Yeah, well, black and- Murmur definitely, it was like dark folk, neo-folk. Like, and Big Sleep was like at the time,

I was listening to a lot of like this band, Tinder Sticks and Nick Cave era, like Boatman Call era, and some weirder Tom Wade stuff. And it kind of influenced that band. But Murmur, yeah, took on its own life. It's crazy music. That started with me and my buddy Ryan White. He's super talented singer-songwriter.

He's played in a bunch of Connecticut hardcore bands. Also had a band called Call at Arson, which was on the cusp of becoming a very big band. That kind of fell apart. But him and I started Marmermer. It was just murmuring. It was just the two of us. And we went into Gregg's and started recording songs.

And Greg became a part of the band too, you know. And he helped us mold and shape these songs. Ryan will come with these parts. And I'd put my, like, kind of, like, darkness into it lyrically. Yeah, you were like the bass. Yeah. The bass vocal. And it's crazy that you and Ryan's voices are, like, a perfect.

Even my mom was like, it is amazing. that these two found each other. We sang together so well. It's crazy. That was like a very emotional record, you know. Yeah, yeah. That brought things out of me. I never knew were in there, you know.

We had a whole cast of people that came in on it, you know, Greg, Chris Teddy, who was his partner at the studio, played with us. You know, we had a whole live band where we had like eight people playing live. We did like a full string section, you know, from the Yale string quartet played with us. And we only played like three. We only played like three live shows, but they were all really special, you know. But writing that record, Ryan and I, then recording with Greg and putting all our touches on that final thing. It was really something. It was the biggest achievement of my life because I was always said, this is what I want to do forever.

This is my lifetime band. This is like what I'm most comfortable doing. Why did it not, why did you guys not take this thing full time on the road? This should be at Madison Square. Yeah. Brian was not capable. Okay. You know, and I love the dude.

He's my friend. He was going through a lot of hard times. He just wasn't capable of doing it. And we, you know, sometimes we butted heads towards the end. Sometimes it just, you know, I think it just kind of faded away. We didn't fight, but we had a couple, like, little things that happened that just, like, slowly started like creative

pulling us apart and not even creative just like almost like personal stuff and um he went down a different path you know and Ryan recently

in the last actually a couple years found religion you know and that's become his life and he's been writing a lot of new music um but it's Christian

based music and that's the path he's on and that's cool you know I can't force somebody to like murmur's a demon right well murmur is a demon yeah but it's also a you know a beautiful word ooh you know there's like great word and you know a lot of the murmur songs were dark and there was like occult themes in them as well and i think as he found religion he found it hard to relate and didn't really want to be a part of something like that do you ever like want to try and convince him because it's such a big thing for you no no no

That's like trying to convince somebody you were dating to fall back in love with you again. You know, it just feels like I don't ever want to have to convince anyone to do anything. Right. So we recorded that record. We also recorded a covers record of like six or seven songs. The first record we had two songs on the Mayans TV show, which was pretty cool. Yeah. One of the cover songs we did is going to be on the pilot episode of the reboot of the that show Prison Break.

Oh, shit. Is that breaking news? I think he's breaking news. But also, since in between all this, and after we, you know,

the band wasn't having, Greg and I also have been writing music together and still plan on doing something. You know, we actually, a year ago, we started laying down.

We were like six songs already written for our next record. The amount of songs you've written in the last five years It's just a little. This dude, I don't know. Something fucking burst in my head. I don't even know how I'm doing it because

never mind writing and just getting ready for like, writing the new demons record, then learning all the Blood for Blood songs. I was like, my brain is on. A new Blood for Blood Album. It feels full. Yeah, I mean, I'm recording the new Blood for Blood for Blood record too. It's full.

So it's been hard to like, I still have to learn another song for the show in two days. Oh, perfect. I only know half of it. And I have to get Paper Gangster because we're bringing back. Oh, shit. It doesn't even matter.

Just do this. The verses are kind of tough. They're kind of like weird, paste and like mumbly. You know, all the rest of it's super easy. Those first two records, there's a lot of song where the verses are like. Check out, go, go, go, get, got, got. So I dread learning the old songs because there's so much there. But I pounded, you know, I would know at least 18, 19 songs now.

And then we're writing this whole new record. And we're going to start playing those. So once you record those, you don't really learn them until you start listening to it. And I had to relearn all the, demon songs because they weren't songs we had in our repertoire. We were writing on Greg's studio. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, so it's just a lot, but I've also become quite prolific in the last few years. Dude, you're on the run of a lifetime. It's crazy. It really is insane. We mentioned Ig earlier, but let's let's talk Ig before we wind down here. Super fun. You're going kind of back

to your roots here. Yep. Yeah, Egg was like, we just decided we want to do a cool, old school, hardcore band. And this was like in the 2005-ish area, 2006. Actually, maybe it'll longer. Well, probably around there. And the egg was me. Dave Russo, Larry Dwyer, Matt McIntosh. All three guys are like two of the original Hapry guys.

And Matt played guitar on satisfaction record. And then Sean Beely, Sean Brickley, he's like a bass player. He played in a bunch of the Connecticut bands, mostly a mans ruin and Pale Horse. And And so Ig wrote a bunch of songs, and we just started playing, like, locally, just punk rock shows and hardcore shows. Some of my favorite songs I've ever recorded in my life, dude, like super fun. Your cunting daughter. Your cunting daughter is such a good thing.

Banger. Yeah, we trash, which is like, you know, trash and it became the word in early 2000. You fucking, you know, with Frank Threegon and Furness and all of us, that was like the word for party, man. Wingsbeer Sports. Yeah, that was the same era. So Wingsbeer Sports and Ig were like, you know, everything was like, oh, that's crazy. Do you get Ig tonight? You know, and that became a song, get Ig tonight.

And we recorded like a demo at Mike Z's house. Mike Z played guitar and a hundred demons for a while, too. We had a little studio recorded. Played a bunch of shows in Connecticut. Our first show was like fucking 300 people there for us. The songs leaked out online before we even put anything out. Everyone knew the lyrics of the songs. I was like, this is what it's all about.

The next big egg rules. The next egg thing. Yep, the next egg thing. And then Ig evolves into one of the most influential bands to me of all time, obviously, in the Ig fits. Yep. Truly open the door for many. Yeah.

I mean, everyone has their Halloween Misfits cover band, but we started doing it. And we started out like so heavy into it. We're going to learn every song. There's so many. even the shitty ones like you know ratfink but yeah right now dude ratfink brutal song we Mephisto waltz brutal track like come on yeah devil's whorehouse like dude devil's horroarhouse it's good bust it's not a song anyone wants here yeah we played

spook city our first show we probably did almost every single that's insane it's too many just an hour long this year will be this year will be the 18th anniversary of us playing you know one show a year One year we did two shows. It's a lot. We did one in Massachusetts. We get asked a lot to play shows, too. We get asked to play, New England, I said, how that's big fits. Yeah, that's our territory.

But I do have an idea, because we always say on our 20th anniversary, that's when either our kids are taking over or we're done. But I want to do on the 20th anniversary is get Twitch fits over, and we go head to head on a stage back and forth all night long. Cut this part. Yeah. Clap here. Genius.

Yep. Let's go. have it end like that and opening with another misfits cover man we should do and the legacy dude we should end with Halloween yeah with like all eight people playing yeah 100% damn well we're gonna make a plan because it's we're gonna have to cross paths eventually you know yeah it sounds like a threat we're all and you guys like do you do it right you know i mean you do we used to do like a little merch the first maybe seven eight years we made all these cool shirts and like with the takes on like our, our versions, like,

wear Eagles dare was actually wear Eagles trash. Like, that was the shirt, you know what I mean? We would play the songs proper, but we'd have our different saying is on the shirt. I will say that that the Egg Fitz Show every year in Connecticut is like a family holiday. Yeah, it's an event. You get a text from Pete like, hey, show's coming.

And everybody's like, I'm already there. Don't worry about it. Yeah. For the most part, we played at the same place. We've varied some spots early on, but we're always back at Cherry Street Station in Wallingford. It's packed. Is it not your favorite thing? Oh, yeah.

Dude, it's the best day of the year for me. It feels like Christmas, every Christmas Eve, like every Igfit show. You got to get on. Kingfitts. Do you have favorite songs to sing? Oh, yeah. Favorites, I love, I love horror business. I love singing horror business.

We haven't done it yet. I love singing. she. Love she. So it's just so right there in my range and it just feels so good. London Dungeons is a lot of powerful.

Yeah, it's just so that flow is so nice too. I mean, there's not one song I really don't like. Sometimes it gets a little hard like static age sometimes. It's a good tough one. All the high screen. The high screens, yeah.

It's crazy. And I'm going to blow my voice out. And every year I'm like, fuck, going to be able to do this and every year everyone's like do that was the best set you're yeah you know the only song that we uh dropped i think a half step was bullet yeah because it's just i love ripping through that dude i can't i bet you can but it's not easy especially if you play like 20 songs know what song we always drop we always want we always we always we used to play it and then we stopped because it i call it the rhyme of the ancient mariner of the misfits and it's tape readers

It's like a three-minute song, but it might as well be 30 minutes. It feels so long compared to all the other songs. It's two parts for three minutes. It's crazy. So we never play it anymore. And then every year we would have like a guest bowl. Like we always do Nike a Gogo and Frankie Hans would get up and sing Nike a Gogo. Larry always sings Mommy, can I go out and kill tonight?

And Matt always sings Spinal Remains. And Matt's son used to come up. he's older now he's a teen older than a teenager but when he was a kid he'd come up and he would always play like two songs with us on drums and rock it and just kill it you know so we'd always do these kind of special things i used to do the uh dancing shopping list for the first few years i'd bring the whole sack and i literally withdraw one day i threw like a five pound rudabay out and hit someone in the fucking head with it you know almost killed them when we did we did the volume one just as like a thing for Taylor's Studio.

Yeah. So when we did the volume two, it was like a very deliberate thing kind of as a tribute to Cale. The first thing was like, we got to get Pete on the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, that was fun, man. You were James Hetfield on that. Yeah, that was very cool.

So cool. Me and Greg had fun just ripping through the songs and it was like really, really nice to do that and just be on the record, man. Which of all of your creative endeavors do you think most represents you? as a person. There's so many pieces of me and like every one of them it's hard to like I'm such a weirdo that I don't know what defines me sometimes so I feel at home with everything that I've ever done but I think murmur probably man I just think that's like I love every band I love all the members and I love writing music and I love singing all different ways but murmur is like the one

that just struck me the most especially as I just got older you know it feels like that's what I can carry on with until I fucking die. Am I swearing too much? I feel like an idiot. Sponsors. Balls. Cod. Yeah. Piss. I don't like to sound ignorant, but I feel like I'm... You're the egg guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Trash him. Mirmers the one, man. I love that. And that's like... It is one of the best records I've ever heard. I legitimately love that record so much and I wore it out so much when it first came out. It's crazy. It's become like a record like, we never pushed

never had any help with it and like it found its way in these like group places Greg is out with Chris Teddy's band the world is my oh yeah what is it's like world's a beautiful place world's a beautiful place and they did a tour with uh between the buried at me and Greg was telling me that you know the singer from between the buried and me that's the band and him like that's all they were their murmur heads yeah they're straight up and when I hear like people from like when people People just from like other kind of worlds and like getting into that. People that I think are respectable, like musicians.

It's undeniable. My mom is a straight up murmur head. And that's a record too. My mom was too, you know? And it's like that was a record like my parents could get into. Just regular kind of people. And it hit on so many levels, you know. Yeah.

It was cool. And that's not taken away from, I love all the other bands. No, they're all part of you. I pick them all. Yeah, sure. I don't see myself. screaming in a hundred demons when I'm like 75 years old you know what I mean I will say this there is a theme with Pete and a hundred demons every single time he says I'm not doing that yeah

he ends up doing I know I don't piece of shit he is gonna be doing it when he's 75 I eat my words all the time man yeah I do every hundred demons I can't I said I wasn't gonna do it yeah and then I ended up doing it I don't know what it is you know but ultimately I gave in and I'm like what else am I going to do. And it's not like what else am I going to do. It's like, this is all I've ever done, dude, since I was 14, is play underground music and playing punk rock bands or hardcore bands or metal bands. Like, I've had businesses and they were successful and I've had jobs and I've done a lot of cool things. But playing music has been my outlet, my whole life. And now at this point of my life, at 54 years old, it's like, I'm actually getting paid. And it's not about the money,

but if I can... Helps. If I can, like, pay my bills and pay my kids' way through school and, like, do cool things. Like, why am I not going to do it? And I enjoy it. Yeah. And it's your, like, there's no, like, obviously we're saying that in a joking way, but it's like, it's your friends. Yeah.

Like, that's, that's for me. It's been my whole life forever, man, is this. For me, like, when I look at King Nine, like, if we're ever, like, I don't know, I don't know. It's like, we're never. Were you not going to see Gianne? Exactly. Like, that's our. friends like it's just an excuse for us to be like right a record and it's just us hanging out

it's great man that's this i mean i mean i'm in a all my bands are with my brother yeah and we're like i'm not going to break up with my brother you know why would we not do stuff that's just how it works it's the best part about hardcore it is your friends could actually not know how to do anything you want to be in a band you want to play bass yeah and let's be honest like right now like music that we play is bigger than it's ever been yeah yeah i've never i've never seen seen anything like it. No. I've been doing it for 40 years.

I've never seen anything like it. Me and Shaw Martin talked about this the other day. There was always been bubbles where a band has crossed over and it's exposed the real world to hardcore. And then there's that bubble there and it always pops because hardcore is way too violent for the normal person. That, no offense to the younger kids out there. I don't think you'd take offense to this.

That is not the case anymore. now. So now the normal people are seeing it and they're like, this is just fun. This is great. I can relate to these songs. I can do this. I can do that. And that bubble has nothing to pop it. So it's just becoming, I mean,

for Christ's sakes, you know. AEW. Babyby reviews got all these songs on it. It's become like almost mainstream on some levels, but it's given people an experience. First of all, who can afford to go see mainstream artists anymore when it's like tickets are like $500, $1,000, $650.

Now you can go see like bands like ours, right, for 20, 30, sometimes 10, you know, but like in an affordable range and get that experience of live music, you know, but Shannon, my wife says this all the time. She's like, this is why it's becoming so big. No one, none of these like normal people have these outlets that you guys have. And that's why they're starting to creep into this world. And that's fine by me. I don't care who listens to our music.

Like, I want people to hear it. people to come to shows. And the wrong people are going to get weeded out anyways. Yeah. I don't care when bands get big. Like if people want to play music professionally, what's wrong with that, man? I don't think it's the coolest thing in the world. I mean, if you're selling your soul for it and changing everything and your ideals and morals, and that's a different story. But if you are who you are and you're just playing shows and all of a sudden, like, you went from playing 100 people a night to 2,000 people a night, who's going to say no to that? It's kind of ultimately what we want, right?

Yeah. In some capacity. In some capacity. Are you a Sally's guy or a Frank Pippey's guy? You're going to laugh at this. I've never had Sally's pizza in my life. Dude, what are you doing? Isn't that crazy?

How is that possible? Because Waterbury pizza is even better than New Haley's pizza. Well, where's, where's modern fall in that film? Modern, I think, is better than Frank Pipp. I think modern is modern. So you've had modern. Oh, yeah, of course. Okay.

Yeah, I've honestly never had Sally's in my life. When is your birthday? My birthday? Yeah. December 18th. 71. That's not an ideal time to travel to Connecticut. No, Christmas time in CT. I'm going to come, when I come and we do the haunted tour around Connecticut, which we're going to do, I'll take you to Sallies. I'll take you to Dominic and Vinnie's. I can't go to Morseys, right? No, you can't.

But Dominic and Vinnie's is, I don't know. Can't get a tuna pizza? It's become my, can't get a tuna pizza. That's my favorite pizza. And that's been a waterberry staple for, you know, probably 50, 60 years. And you think it's better than... I think all pieces that's preferential, you know? True. It's fucking delicious. They cut their pizza into squares

and put them in paper bags. Paper bags? Yeah, because they don't get soggy. Because boxes make pizza soggy. And paper bags, don't? Yeah, well, it's almost like... Ventilation there's like... Yeah, it's like this brown paper.

Almost like the paper you would cover your school books with... Now, I'm picturing something... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody should picture. I'm picturing a paper bag. It's like a paper bag from a grocery store. Yeah. But full of the slices in that particular order.

But when you get that pizza at home, it is still crisp. Wow. Yeah. But Dominic Greenies is great. There's a place in West Harper called Jimmies that does the same thing. And that was our local spot. You know, there's another place in Connecticut, which I love to probably get shit for saying it. But I love Colony pizza. Did you ever go there?

No. Colony is like this bizarre pizza. It started in Stanford, Connecticut. Now they franchise it. sell it at Yankee Stadium. Oh, wow. And there's like a few of them in Connecticut. I think they open one up in Orlando as well. Their personal pizzas, they're like this big, they're like this thin. They're like these crispy, chewy, cracker like crust. It tastes nothing like you've ever had before. We got to go there. Okay. So when I got sick like a year and a half ago and I had surgery and I was like the first thing I ate when I left the house was Colony. I ate three other pizzas.

I lost like 40 pounds. I gained it all back with them. I could. I eat three pizzas and like a sitting. All right. We'll add it to the list. Yeah, it's a great spot. I have a question from my brother here. Yeah. Why is Connecticut the best?

Man, it's so easy. It's such a like un-remarkable state in so many ways, a Passover state. When I hear other people talk about it. I don't like that. That's just a state like we just drive through. I don't like that. And it's like not, there's so much there, you know. But you have to be from.

Connecticut to know these things, you know. First of all, New England to me is one of the greatest places on earth. I agree. Like, I'll never leave it. I love the history of Connecticut. I love the history of all the states, but, you know, you're born in a certain place. You could either revile it or love it, you know, and I love where I live. I love the people I'm around. We've had some of the greatest music and some of the greatest, like, musicians come out of our state, you know, and some of the greatest clubs. Like, just on that level alone, Like the things that I'm into, it's perfect, man. It's perfection to me.

I don't need to search anywhere else. Connecticut's perfection. I mean, as somebody who's a visitor to Connecticut, and as, like Pete said, it was always one of those, like, pastures states when I was younger. The more I started hanging out with P and everybody in Connecticut, I kind of was like, Connecticut's not the best. Over the years, as I've done things, you know,

I used to book the Big Fest, like the Big Oi Fest, or I would have these crazy DJ nights. and I'd have friends come in from like, not over the country, but like all over the world. Like my buddy's from Finland or people from Spain or like Canada and all, they fly in. Half these people when they got there, they're like, I don't want to leave.

First of all, they think every day is like that. But we created such a great vibe and like seeing that people just thought it was the greatest place on earth. They'd never had food like that, they never had food like that, they never had green trees and grass growing up. around their whole states are on fire, you know. They're like, this is what it's like. They like the seasons. They see snow. They see summer. It's like.

Great place to be a kid and be born. Yeah, definitely. I had a great time. Had a great time in childhood. Pete, I've got one more question. All right. Peter Morsey. Pete Morsey. Can you tell me your top four hardcore records of all the time? Top four hardcore records. I hate lists. But I'm going to give you some. I already said earlier. Lost Generation Return from Inco's LP. Gateway record for me. Incredible record. Sounds like nothing else. HR sings on it. It's awesome. Super cool. You're going to laugh at this one too. You that today can't close my eye seven inch and not just because Ray was here earlier, but it's a great It's perfect. Hardcore, mean, angry straight edge record. I don't even care about the straight edge part. It's just it's everything I want to

I'm gonna hear in hardcore and that will lead right into my next seven inches, the first negative approach seven inch and tied down. They're both like, those are gems to me, man, those ripping, raging hardcore and it still had almost like this melodic skinhead feel to it, you know. And you hear why be something you're not? And it's like, oh, that's, that's hardcore. That's what everybody's what that's what it should sound like. It epitomizes everything that I love about it. I know that one's on everyone's list, but man, it's huge. Perfect. And I'll throw you a loop here because this is still one of my favorite records and hardly anyone ever brings this record up.

PTL Club, there are Massachusetts band. They had a record called 13 Commandments and it's one of my favorite hardcore records ever. I think it came out like 85. The only person, only other people I know that really love this record, even talk about our Max and like Fahs from Castaside like we always talk about it but i've never heard those words in my life yeah ptl club ptl club so there used to be a religious tv show called the ptl club it's a take on like a 700 club yeah but no it was actually called ptl maybe i'm wrong i don't know but anyways the records ptl club 13 commandments is lp they put out a couple other seven inches too one of the

singer of that band is the father of like one of the kids that was in like a semi-current hardcore band from New Hampshire maybe it was like I don't know I got to find out

the band is ripping, raging negative approach style hardcore awesome awesome love it unbelievable stuff yeah Pete can't thank you enough for being here today

had a great time we did it we made it happen yeah thank you we're gonna bring do the ghost episode at some point soon. It's coming.

We're going to the Warren Museum. We're going to do it all. Get your butts ready. Yeah, put your your butts ready. Yeah, damn. Thank you. You're an excellent host. I hope you get your jacket. Jackets coming.

It's going to be. I'll be, like I said, I'll be in touch for your measure. It's just a little bit longer. Embrace the Black Light is out now. New Blood for Blood, LP is coming out soon. You're going to see Pete everywhere.

He's very tired. Please. But he's having the best time. Whatever you do, do not jump on him on stage. Don't jump on Pete, but mosh as hard as you can. And don't tell your friends that it's going to be so scary for the show. Pete, if you'd like to share some last words of the show. Thank you guys for two in and end.

This was an excellent episode. I wish, you know, Bo was here, man. I was really looking forward to doing an episode with him. Rest in peace, brother, man. I know you're going to contact Colin again. It has already. It will be. Thank you, Pete.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you all for watching. See you next week. Bye. Spotify, it's Jay Shetty. Are you one of those media strategy people, scrolling through spreadsheets, searching for an audience that pays twice as much attention

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