Over the years, you’ve seen how much metal and hardcore has been progressed. What’s your opinion on how things are changing right now?
I love it. I’ve always kind of thought that music is on a 20-year cycle, so the fact that bands that are coming around now sound like bands that influenced me when I was younger is fucking awesome. Not intentionally, but the cycle of taste is that they sound like a band that when I was getting into hardcore, I would’ve just fallen in love with. Knocked Loose is a perfect example. They would’ve gotten me into hardcore when I was 20 years younger. It starts off simple and gets more and more complicated until it collapses on itself and goes back to the basics of why you started building anything in the first place. They’re not trying to dress it up with anything fucking cool. It’s just straight up hardcore at its purest form, that needs to be heard again.
You guys have what I think of as canon Every Time I Die, then the absolute rowdiness of From Parts Unknown, then a more polished sound on Low Teens. Tell me a little bit about that trajectory for you, lyrically and musically.
With From Parts Unknown, I was definitely in a really strange spot in my life, where I found myself being positive for the first time. I didn’t know really how to write hardcore lyrics or be involved with hardcore without some sort of old grudge to bring to the surface a ton of negativity. That was always kind of the filter I looked at the world through, just like, 'We’re all fucked and everything’s pointless.' But From Parts Unknown, I had just gotten into meditation and had this sort of like -- and I know how corny this sounds, so I’m going to use it very cautiously -- but this spiritual awakening, of, ‘Maybe there’s hope for humanity and maybe there’s hope for me as a human being given all of my mistakes I might be salvageable.’ That was very hopeful.
Then, to follow it up right after that, my whole world went to shit and I almost lost everything. So on Low Teens, I can’t believe I even fucking bought into my own bullshit for one second. Like, everything is fucked. There’s no amount of positive thinking that’s going to make your world a better place. I think as far as that lyrical trajectory goes, that’s the path I was on. With Low Teens, I was so preoccupied with what was going on with my wife and kid that I just didn’t have time to even grow with them. They just pretty much handed me a record when they were done, and I had so much to say. It just overlapped perfectly.