1. Lets settle this for once and all: Sixbrewbantha or Six Brew Bantha, which is the correct way of spelling it?
Bryan: Use whichever you like better, I don't think we even collectively agree on this point. I spell it Six Brew Bantha.
Tyler: its like potatoe, poTAToe know what I mean? I like sixbrewbantha but bryan think its like 90’s emo bullshit or some godheadsilo bullshit which I completely understand. Either way you write it when its on a poster hidden behind some raw brutal logo it dosent fucking matter.
Mark: $1x8r3w8@dju@n.
2. Although every interview I have read has asked the question, could you reiterate just how you came up with such a unique name?
B: We hate this question but have to accept that by giving ourselves such a dumb name we will have to face it for as long as we're bothering to answer interviews. It's one of those half-assed thrown together names you (or at least people like us) come up with when forced to pick a band name on the spot and it just stuck and is what we're called. I like that it's definitely not taken by anybody else, a little more memorable than just being another band named after a song on their favorite Slap-A-Ham Records release or something.
T: fuck explaining the name again. Lets just say being cooped up in marks parents basement stoned as fuck made for some useless conversation which led to the unexplainable band name sixbrewbantha. There is so much half assed weak grind/pv shit out there with super serious band names having a name that throws people off is hilarious and once they learn the name it sticks in their head. “Who were those kill buddies with that ridiculous band name?” shout out to obacha for also having a name not in the oxford dictionary!
M: It was essentially a compromise between two absolutely brilliant band names.
3. Could you provide us with some background as to how SBB came to be?
B: Mark and Tyler have played music together forever (literally learned to play together actually) and wanted to start a project that was just the two of them, after mine and Tyler's old band Cyborg Justice broke up I sort of drifted into doing occasional vocals which eventually led to me being on recordings, going on our first tour and basically being “in the band”. We had a bass player briefly at one point (our friend Jeff who is actually responsible for getting us into grindcore and other fast loud music) but he couldn't commit himself to it and it's just been us three ever since.
T: Ive known mark since I was 8. He showed me nofx one night at our boy scout meeting when I was 11. We me bryan in photography class, he liked metal, we liked punk, (and other music duh) we would spend all class talking about music. We were in some other bands, we wanted to play more hateful music so we did. Bryan joined on vocals and played our first show as a whole band with iron lung and extortion in 2009. Fuck it.
M: Tyler and I have been jamming in the basement since we were 13 / 14 years old making a hell of a racket. Eventually we began structuring our noise in a way and playing at all ages punk/metal/hardcore shows around town followed by our lovely friend/chet Bryan joining us on screaming, thus we coerced the entity that is sixbrewbantha today.
4. I love your demo Testosterone Effect , and I notice you guys included your physical address on it, a contrast to must bands usually just putting an email contact or website link, was this a conscious decision to kick start the nostalgia for the old days of hand written letters, manual trades and tape swaps? Or did publishing your address have another motive?
B: In order to even bother doing something like put out vinyl in this age where everything is digital and increasingly being done over the internet you have to gain satisfaction from things existing in a physical format, obviously email and other forms of online communication are hugely convenient but there's really still something more personal/meaningful about receiving a handwritten letter or random tape in the mail as opposed to just some text on a screen asking you to click a link to some band's bandcamp page or whatever... Unfortunately as far as I know we haven't received a whole lot ever in the way of snail mail correspondence but it's not my address so my bandmates may feel free to correct me.
T: I don’t know if you have ever sent or received a letter or package in the mail from a fellow punk but it is the best feeling. If you really like it you can take the time to write a letter and send it, it’s pretty special, not to sound like a baby or anything. Just to let everyone know that is and will always be my PARENTS address so please do not send anthrax to the house.
M: I felt having an address on the record would offer an alternative to relying on the internet which I sense people are becoming assimilated into. I feel the internet is a very positive thing in a lot of ways, I’m even using it right now, I also feel it can be a distraction and detract from people’s lives at times. I just like having the option open to mail us in a more personal way if someone did not want to participate in the “viral” world. Also I don’t think people should be forced to depend on technology as that’s a notion I can see being dangerous. And I sometimes hope that someone will send a cool demo /record
5. In another break away from conventionality you guys also put your demo straight on to wax, a move bands tend to avoid until they have set sound and have been through a series of internal refinements, not that there is need for justification, but was their any particular reasoning on going straight to vinyl?
B: It actually first came out on a CD-R packaged in a 7'' size sleeve for our first tour back in summer 2009 which contained a couple tracks that didn't make it onto the 7'', but in any case we just liked how the recording sounded and felt it was worthy of being our first vinyl release. SBB had already been a band in some form for probably a year or so and there are some other ultra obscure demos from before that one kicking around so while it may seem like we took the very first thing we had ever produced and just threw it onto wax we actually kind of felt we deserved to be represented on 7'' by that point and were happy enough with that demo to use it. Everyone we talked to about helping put it out hated the recording but eventually our good friend Jordan (Black Banana Records) agreed to throw down a few dollars and help us deal with the pressing plant, I still dig the savage lo-fi quality it captures and I sometimes come across fans of it.
T: Aside from actually thinking it is an awesome recording (super raw but totally ruthless in my opinion) I think we just felt that it was time to get some shit going and your never EVER gonna get anywhere if your “waiting for label interest” face is no one probably gives a shit about your band and especially being an unknown band with a name such as sixbrewbantha we just had to put down to cheddar and put that shit out. That being said THANKS TO JORDAN FROM BLACK BANANA for caring and helping us with that demo 7”. On a side note its also tight to listen to our recordings and see how they progressively sound “better” from release to release. We are actually using one of the songs (outcome of ignorance) from the demo on our split 7” with Agitate.
M: The demo was originally a cd-r demo release for our first tour, we felt partial to its noisy production and charm and felt it worthy to immortalize on vinyl.
6. Following your successful demo, you released an awesome split with the prince of mince Archagathus (thanks for sending me my copy!), how did it feel being able to grind to the same level of quality as a mincecore luminary such as Archagathus? And how did the option of doing a split with them come about?
B: We had been huge Archagathus fans ever since a copy of their split tape with Hallucinosis ended up in our collective possession (I think after our first visit to Winnipeg on the aforementioned 2009 tour). We met and hung out with them when we played together at Winnipeg's awesome annual grind/punk/metal gathering Arsonfest in 2010 and the idea of doing a split came up, we wrote Dan and he was into the idea, the rest is history. It definitely feels great to share a 7'' with such an awesome band and people.
T: As it says on the Archagathus myspace page under record label “any crazy fucker with enough money to put out a 7”. We have known dan since 2010 and I would consider him a pretty good friend in grindcore and real life. I also thought it would be cool to do our first split with some might consider the modern day Agathocles (I personally like ARCH more but shhhh don’t tell the kvlt mincers!) but wanted to put material good enough that you would actually want to flip the 7” and not just get lost in the back of someone’s collection. FILE IN THE SBB SECTION NOT THE ARCH SECTION (HA record jokes).
M: We are all archagathus fans and it was an honour to do a split with them. The idea came up when we played arson fest with them in their home town of Winnipeg. Arch and us closed one of the nights and we were very stoked on each other’s sets, we crushed many a beer in the parking lot where the idea of a split came up. A couples months later we were working on making it a reality.
7. What are your general thoughts on the split 7” format? Is it a rite of passage?
B: We're all huge record collector nerds with piles upon piles of grindcore 7''s to our names so for us it's a totally classic format and a staple of the music we love. A side of a 7'' can be the perfect length for our style if used properly and it's fun to show solidarity with our friends from all over the world by sharing slabs of wax together, not to mention the obvious benefit of helping to get the records distributed more widely. Today it's actually more financially viable to just do a 12'' (at least in our experience) but the worldwide love for the grindcore EP I think will keep them coming out as long as people are still making this variety of senseless noise.
T: The 7” is by far the greatest format music can ever be released on. So many classics of punk/hc/pv/gc whatever have been released on that format so yes I would said it’s a “right of passage” to some extent. Like seriously No Comment’s “Downsided” is THE pinnacle of hardcore punk and it’s a fucking 7”.
M: 7. I don’t know if I’ve ever thought of a split 7” as a rite of passage but I can understand why someone would think so in the world of extreme hardcore as it is such a nostalgic staple of the genre. It is also my favorite format, the perfect time length and having two bands demonstrated on each side is just perfect to me.
8. Some persons such as myself have dubbed your music as mincecore with fastcore leniencies, others call it just straight up grindcore, how do you perceive yourselves at the end? Or is sub-genre infeudation irrelevant?
B: I just consider us a straight ahead horrendous noisy grind band. We certainly love fastcore and “mincegrind” (if that can even be considered a genre, I guess as of late it has sort of spawned its own particular style) and influences from bands of those styles definitely creep into our music. Getting hung up on genres is boring though, we just try to just play as fast as possible and go out of our way to break peoples' eardrums.
T: We are a diy punk band. I say that because I never want to be associated as a “metalgrind” band like Nasum or Rotten Sound. OBVIOUSLY we like metal and it comes out in our music but our attitudes towards life and music are not represented by drum triggers or relapse records (also scion suck my fucking dick your coporate pigs). We all have such varied musical tastes that it would be a shame to limit our musical creativity to one genre or “sub” genre. Mark has grown to become one of the most insane guitar players in grind, there is no room for conventional bullshit in his writing, with that being said raw fucking punk hatred is never sacrificed and there is absolutely no fucking technical wankery EVER going to be involved in SBB. Mincegrindingviolence.
M: I like using genres/ sub-genres as a means of describing bands to people, it paints a good picture of what a band can sound like. It’s a bit silly to argue over it but can also be kina fun. I feel sixbrew is a good mix of extreme music genres but I usually just tell people we play grindcore when asked to keep it short, also I feel it’s the genre we’re most akin to.
9. I love your social-political lyrics, really hard hitting wake up calls to reality, is this a character that only reveals itself when grinding or do these lyrical convictions a mirror to personal thoughts? And just how fucked do you think the world is?
B: Our lyrics are definitely an extension of the frustrations we encounter in everyday life, I don't think we go out of our way to be a “political” band but since a lot of the negative factors one deals with in the world stem from social and political issues a lot of our lyrics definitely arrive back at that. We're all pretty friendly, laid back, for the most part happy people and at least for me having grindcore as an outlet to deal with all the bad shit and make something I'm passionate about from it definitely helps me maintain that and not succumb to the more pessimistic parts of my thought process. As somebody privileged enough to have lived my entire life in one of the most desired areas in the world (not to mention in the first world period) I would say sometimes I feel like the human spirit is being slowly but surely killed off by a variety of factors and that we're totally done for and spiraling on a path to certain doom while other times it seems as though there could be hope after all... mind you one could argue that much of the world has finished spiraling towards that doom with billions of people living in brutal poverty and totally hopeless situations unfathomable to someone like me. So I guess to answer your question, pretty fucked.
T: I think dystopia pretty much explain how fucked up the world is on “human = garbage”. The world is a place filled with greed, corruption, disregard for human, animal, natural life and more importantly disregard for human emotion. I personally do not write lyrics but I 100% back the lyrics bryan and mark have written. I feel they are very well articulated attacks on the state of what human life has become centered around (money, lust, greed, excess, etc..) and they do mirror with our own personal thoughts. I think it is extremely important to have socially conscience lyrics even if they are masked behind growls and high-pitched screams. A HUGE and very very serious fuck off to lyrics about sexualized violence within the grindcore community. All this being said if you met us you probably we would think we sing about flowers and hi fives and killing beers cause were pretty stoked buddies!!! Never a dull moment on a sixbrew tour.
M: The lyrics I write I feel quite strongly about and I stand by them mind and soul. I feel the world is as fucked up as we let it and choose to view it, the state of things are unbalanced and the most you can do to counter act that is to make the small changes when you can, be conscientious to all around you, share ideas and be open minded to others ideas and just give a fuck. Also fuck things up and steal from oppressive institutions and rich corporations whenever possible. Fuck them, sever the hand that feeds.
10. Lyrics such as yours tend to be although not exclusively rest in one of two major camps of political thought namely anarchism or socialism, although a controversial question, would you be willing to express what your political alignments are to give an insight into the perspective mindset of SBB?
B: None of us identify under any particular political school of thought. I formulate my opinions based on my own morals and life experiences, while we have plenty of anarchist friends and are generally in agreement with them on many issues there are also points we would disagree on. Our lyrics don't claim to offer any solutions to the mess humanity has created for itself, if we've managed to make a couple people stop and consider things I would say we've achieved what we set out to do. We definitely cannot encourage people enough to think for themselves, hold any authority figure under complete distrust, stand against all forms of hate, oppression and unnecessary violence and do what you can on an individual basis to lead by example and try to improve things in whatever capacity you can manage no matter how minimal it may seem.
T: Aligning yourself and defending a single political ideal brings up the endless debate of who is right and who is wrong. If your RIGHT then your fucking wrong…endless freedom within ones mind, fuck personal thought control, break down the walls. Do mushrooms.
M: The idea behind most sixbrew lyrical content is that we present questions not answers. We do not align with political ideologies of any kind; we salute autonomous thought and individual ideas.
11. Your exceptionally well received ST LP, boasts a fantastic production value and professional musicianship, what was the creative process for writing it? And how do you personally feel about it?
B: The LP is sort of a collection of material from the first four years of our existence, a few tracks on it are re-recorded from previous releases and some date as far back as when I first started jamming with them in late 2008 (Fisgard Block Party for instance, which is originally from the demo 7'') while others came together literally right before recording (Conquering Mind hadn't even been played live when we recorded it) so to say there was a unanimous creative process toward putting together the LP would honestly be a total lie. It was actually supposed to be a recording for two different split LPs but after hearing the finished product we decided it definitely stood as its own release. I love the LP and am extremely proud of it, our good friend Cody who recorded it did an amazing job (especially considering he recorded it at our jamspot and brought only a laptop and a few mics) and to hear ourselves on such a pristine sounding recording for the first time ever was really mind blowing.
T: Well first off it sounds so good because it was recording in our jam space at the time (the shittiest, dankest smelling basement that I swear had a grow opp in it) by the extremely talented drummer and generally handsome guy CODY R BARESICH of Iskra. It was our first recording that was not on cassette and I can explain how happy I am with the way it turned out. For an LP I think it is a great representation of our band up to that point. Some of the songs are 2 years old, some of them were brand new, it was just nice to have a piece of wax that we could be proud of. Not saying I was not please with the other releases the LP was something else. Also Brenden Schiemen did a fantastic job on the LP cover, and hey him and cody are both from the same city!!!
M: The writing process for sixbrew is ongoing and ever changing. At the time we were jamming and writing in a drug dealer’s basement which we shared with black metal band shibboleth. Our songs I felt had improved since the arch split, but I always feel a band should be improving. Our dear friend Cody “tron” Barseich, drummer of iskra came over one hungover morning after my birthday on October 20th and we spent the day recording the lp. After some mixing we had a solid sounding master which we were very happy with and were stoked as fuck to put out.
12. You recently uploaded your tracks for the upcoming splits with Iskra and Agitate, although still undeniably very SBB like, there is a number of stylistic differences from your ST LP, where these done expressly so or merely just the organic development and maturity of your bands development?
B: The tracks for those two splits are basically everything we've written since recording the LP and having been a band for as long as we have it's to be expected that our sound will change over time. We definitely never sat down and said “okay we have to do this and this differently” but we're also not the kind of band that's just going to pump out the same song over and over again (not that there's necessarily anything wrong with doing that, I love Warsore and Unholy Grave as much as the next grinder).
T: I think shit just got a lot more fucking grinding.
M: We’re just making noise the way we want to hear it.
13. Just from personal intuition I guess your live sound is very much the same as your studio sound, since you don’t tart up your sound to ridiculous lengths, how well are you received live? Play many shows?
B: Being part of such a niche genre the question of how well we're received live really depends on the show we're playing. Fortunately our area has an extremely strong grindcore scene and we're lucky enough to play awesome shows on a pretty regular basis and have a strong tightly knit following around here. That said we've played more than our fair share of sets to blank stares, crossed arms and awkward faint applause after every 30 second song, either due to the audience having no idea what's going on or us totally shitting the bed as every band sometimes does live. We absolutely love playing live, we've been on five tours and played what must be hundreds of shows by now. Lots of our shows on tour have been absolutely amazing and some not so much but we always love playing even if it's to five people at a bar in some shitty town in the middle of nowhere. Our hometown is pretty small so we try not to play locally too often but with the scene being so little and isolated we usually end up playing fairly frequently (every month or two?) for the sake of holding down the fort, in addition to making the trek over to play nearby Vancouver and Squamish a few times a year (though not as often as we'd like due to the geographical disadvantage of living on an island and depending on an overpriced ferry to leave).
T: Sbb has a very simple set up 1 guitar, 1 amp, 1 basic drum kit and 3 vocals. We have probably played around 200 shows and they are always different. One thing that is constant is a sense of confusion “what the fuck those nice guys who were smiling and shit are in THAT band?” its pretty rad.
M: We have played many great shows and some hurtin’ shows. We’ve always been best received when playing to fellow grinders, traditional punk (which we love dearly) enthusiasts not as much. Our recording is a good example of our live sound with the exception of more feedback and general noise while performing live.
14. You guys recently toured the USA, how did that go? Any funny stories to be had, and are there any glaring differences between the Canadian and USA grind scenes?
B: Best time of my life to date. Covering such a massive area and witnessing what's happening in all these different places, meeting so many amazing people and getting to see/play with so many incredible bands was truly a mind altering experience. Way too many funny stories that we only half remember due to rampant alcohol use. The scene in the USA is much stronger simply due to sheer population density, we toured across Canada a couple years ago and it was also amazing but everything is very spread out so different communities are not as connected and a lot more lengthy drives are required to get from show to show. Certain areas of Canada are as strong as anywhere in the states though, it's sort of unfair to compare the two.
T: Like everywhere different cities have their preferences to what kind of shit their into. America definitely has its love for grindcore especially in places like The mid west (legit grindcore mecca), baltimore, and especially LA. LA is so fucking tight because you can go to a show and play with 15 other bands who ALL have blast beats, have 100 kids show up and mosh so fucking hard even if there is no PA and get paid like 10 bucks, its so fucking cool. I guess the real difference is that people find a way to mosh to grindcore no matter how fucked up and weird it is and despite the lack of break downs or d beats, which is tight.
M: We had a fucking blast touring the U.S. met loads of psychotic grinders and horrendous raw punks everywhere. Tours of that magnitude are now the minimum length; we really live for touring, best times in life. It’s wonderful to get to see so many insane bands and drink that much liquor for so cheap. American and Canadian grind scenes are quite similar only the U.S. just has more going on.
15. On the subject of your USA tour, you guys survived a traumatic incident with your vehicle, did this change the mood of the tour or your outlook at life, and how well received was the viral campaign for paypal donations for your tour?
B: Needless to say after the accident I have never been more thankful for myself and all my friends to be alive, given what happened we were really incredibly lucky things weren't far worse and by the time the tour resumed we were just extremely thankful to be able to be in a position to complete it. The campaign for donations literally saved our tour and we were totally overwhelmed at the outpouring of support for us from our friends and even people we have never even met, not to mention our tourmates Agitate and Lt. Dan, the folks at Harrison House in Ft. Wayne and especially everyone at The Leathershop in Lima for doing everything they could to help us out and having our backs super hard during the difficult time following the accident. Made us feel very proud of and inspired by the community we're a part of.
T: Ill keep this short and sweet. It was definitely the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me but it really made me grateful for the kindness that strangers and dear friends can provide for you in a time of need. We owe a lot to trashy and mike of pizza hi five and their homie nick sites (sorry niteschool!) for taking us into their home (the leathershop) in lima and letting us chill out and smoke hella blunts with them and recover from the incident with no questions had. Definitely a sign that the international grindcore community though smaller than other scenes really has a sense of family to it. GRINDCORE LOVE. As far a mood changer I think it may have gone something along the lines of FUCK DEATH WELL GRIND HARDER. Suck my dick death.
M: We flipped our van at 130km which was really violent and intense as I didn’t have a seatbelt. I was extremely happy to discover after crawling out of the wreckage that we were all alive. The only thing that changed my mood was the gross amount of painkillers I was taking for the next month or so of tour, but I also made lots of money selling them which was neat. Crutches/hobbling was pretty weak to deal with but all in all tour was still a go after being taken care of so well in lima Ohio by pizzahifive (thanx for the blunts) and the residents of the leathershop (xoxo niteskool) shortly after which we bought a new van thanks to everyone who threw us their scrilla and saved our sorry asses and our tour, we love you all.
16. Going back to the basics, who would you say have been a big influence on your roles in SBB?
B: For me as a vocalist definitely Jon Chang from Discordance Axis, Scott from Iskra, Seth Putnam (say what you will about the guy but he was definitely one of the most amazing grind frontmen ever in his prime), Lee Dorrian (circa early Napalm Death of course, Cathedral is absolutey awful after their first record), the dude from early Assuck, the guy from Flesh Parade (I suck with names), Mike Williams from Eyehategod, Andy Beattie of No Comment... I was also a huge metalhead before getting into grind so lots of black metal and death metal was behind inspiring me to do extreme vocals in the first place.
T: People who have influenced me the most regarding diy punk and ethichs and shit Wolf/Danni of iskra for setting up black raven records and creating an environment for punks of all ages to come find amazing brutal as fuck music, talk politics and about shit we fucking hate and think is weak, and a kill place to get hammered and crank ACDC and the RAMONES on any given weekend. Um and my dad who over thinks everything and stresses about shit until its absolutely perfect, this has helped when dealing with pressing plants or booking tour, keep busting your ass until your stoked on the end result. And musically speaking for influences Iskra for being the first insanely harsh band I ever saw live, Cody baresich for letting me rip off his drum fills, and the squamish punk scene for turning a little ass town into one of the best grindcore/fastcore scene on the west coast of north America.
M: For me anyways, Aaron Kenyon, Rob marton, humangreed and most importantly Tyler and Bryan.
17. Why is Canada just so pro-active at producing great grindcore? Mesrine, Wake, yourselves, Archagathus, Powercup, Violent Gorge to name a few, and why do you think so many prefer the mincecore approach to grind?
B: Something in the water I suppose.
T: Cause you can suck ass at your instrument and call it mince.. That being said all the members of archagathus and violent gorge are amazing multi-talented musicians (have you ever heard dan play drums in electro quarterstaff…what the fuck?)
M: Great grind can happen anywhere, we like calling the Canadian stuff “hosergrind”. As for the mincecore thing, I don’t know. Probably because it’s brutal and badass as fuck and very true to the roots of old testament grindcore in the vein of napalm death, Agathocles etc. Who wouldn’t want to play sweet shit like that?
18. Care to recommend to us any bands you feel our readers should check out?
B: Ahna, Rape Revenge, Magnum Force, Hyperemesis, Skuff, Obacha, Scaphe, Goner (RIP), Agitate, Osk, Chest Pain, Hoopsnake, Powercup, Pizzahifive, Wake the Machines, The Afternoon Gentlemen, Bastard Deceiver, Sidetracked, Haggatha, Skaabis, Soil of Ignorance, Soy, Violent Restitution, G.O.D... could go on forever.
T: OBACHA, AGITATE, AHNA, ISKRA, NAPALM RAID, STARES, WATER TORTURE, AND FUCKING RUBRICS.
M: shooting spree, obacha, osk, chetwrecker, violent restitution, bungus, happy pill trauma, biocidio, malpractice insurance, agitate, lt.dan, radiation, radioactive vomit, vile horrendous aerial bombardment, transient, scaphe, cokskar, misanthropic noise, ahna, Detroit, bridgeburner, famine, sordo and a buttfuck more.
19. Any “dream bands” you would love to do a split with?
B: Yacopsae, Bloody Phoenix, Suffering Mind, Parlamentarisk Sodomi, Death Toll 80k, Hatred Surge
T: SETE STAR SEPT, IRON LUNG, PLF.
M: Corrupted, Iron lung, death toll 80k, sete star sept and Final exit.
20. Random Question: You go to the zoo, you are allowed to take one animal back with you who will form the newest member of SBB, which animal do you take?
B: Zoos are fucking depressing.
T: Kill the zoo owner and free all the animals and we take them to in and out burger for animal fries and lemon aid.
M: a guppy.
