Blockade Decibel Interview Unedited

Blockade recently had an interview in Decibel. Here's the full unedited text:

I always hate to do this, via email, over the phone or in person, but can you give the Coles Notes version of TEB's history and introduce the other fellers?

This is the most answer anyone ever gets to this question:
Current and final line up: Carroll. Edgar. King. Nolan
Formed in Toronto in late 2003

In a not-so recent piece on power violence in Decibel, Eric Wood of MITB fame mentioned yourselves and Apt. 213 as two of the only bands, that he knows of anyway, playing true powerviolence as he understands it. Were you surprised/flattered/bored by his comments? Had you had any previous contact with Wood? Do you think being tagged as such puts pressure on you guys to live up to some form of invisible standard? Aren't there already enough invisible standards to live up to in metal and hardcore?

Eric is a friend of ours, though we weren't aware until the article came out that he'd said that. I think we were approached to be in the piece primarily because Eric Wood and Chris Dodge had said good things about us.
I could care less if we're true power violence or not, I think that whole discussion is a complete and utter dead end. The fact that Eric Wood named us as one of the only two real power violence bands in 2008 seems to mostly please other people who either call bullshit on it or use it as some kind of proof of whatever spurious point they're arguing. The bottom line is this, if we changed our language slightly no one would care as to whether or not power violence really exists and who is or isn't real power violence.
The Endless Blockade are influenced by Neanderthal, Man is the Bastard, No Comment, Crossed Out and Capitalist Casualties amongst others. That much is clear to anyone with a set of ears attuned to this kind of stuff. We're influenced by power violence, hey, argument gone, there's no debating that point. There's no need for an endless back and forth on whether any band not specifically name checked on the song HSMP can call themselves power violence or not.
Maybe there is an invisible standard we now have to live up to, but I don't know if I'm going to break my back trying to prove myself to someone who thinks a band in a genre that can shift a mere 2,000 records is somehow 'trendy'
I wish the invisible standards in hardcore and metal were a little less invisible; we'd probably have to put up with far less shit like Killswitch Engage and Every Time My Heart Bleeds Tears Last Summer. People forget that genre imposed limitations should define rather than restrict most bands. There's nothing wrong with external influences, hell, we wouldn't exist if that was the case, but people need to understand how to appropriate other ideas seamlessly and not lose track of the defining elements of their core sound. Otherwise you just get bad unfocused bands that don't seem to know what they"re doing

Do you consider what you do powerviolence? Or is what you do simply what you've done since you decided to do what you do and what you do just turned out this way?

I consider what we do to be hardcore punk first and foremost; it's the spirit that informs all our material. Even when we're stealing Hellhammer riffs and singing about Russian emasculation cults we're still a punk band.
Something funny – I thought so, anyway – I saw on the Sound Pollution website is where, in describing TEB, it said something to the effect of "they can't decide if they want to be a fast hardcore band with slow sludgy parts or a slow sludgy band with fast hardcore parts." How would you respond? Is that a fair estimation? How much self-analysis goes into the writing, recording and artwork processes?
Just another risible bio I'm afraid though I suspect I penned that particular outpouring of bullshit myself. I think the original bio from 20 Buck Spin had some part about freeing the slaves ("let my people go!!!") through power violence or some bloody nonsense
As far as self analysis goes I'd say it's generally paramount for anyone in a band to have a good sense of what makes their band sound like their band and maintain a sense of internal logic. Everyone over a certain age has been fooled at least once by some new LP from former legends being billed as "a stunning return to form!" only to find it's complete crap. How many "their best release since Reign In Blood/ Clandestine/ Street Cleaner/ Hear Northing See Nothing/ ad infinitum" can we really be expected to suffer through?
For this record there was definitely a conscious decision to limit the parameters of our sound; it was basically Heresy, Autopsy, Grief, SOB, Infest and little else as the musical bedrock. Pre-practice rituals usually consisted of doing bench presses to mix tapes of Crossed Out and BGK interspersed with Mary Anne MacLean and Marshall Applewhite motivational speeches.
I would also like to publically state that The Endless Blockade are not one of those tedious apologist bands that will tell anyone that listens just how damn musically open minded they are even if their band is mundane grindcore. Primitive was not influenced on any level by Iannis Xennakis, Lalo Schifrin or conscious Hip Hop.

Is there going to be any difference between the 20 Buck Spin release of "Primitive" and the original release? How did this pairing come about and could this see the beginning of a slow down when it comes to the number of different labels you guys have worked with/work with?

Do you mean original release as in first LP? (Primitive is our second LP)
I'd been e mailing back and forth with Dave for a while due to utterly non power violence related mutual obsessions. He came to see us in the bay area and wow oh my god this is all fucking thrilling stuff…
We basically work with our friends, I think we're supposed to be doing something on Relapse this year (ANb split) but even that we consider a Scott Hull project that Relapse just happen to be stumping up the money for.
We're not going to be working with one primary label but we're probably going to stick with the people that have already released stuff for us in the past with a few exceptions who are our friends and we want to work with. God, this is exciting…
I guess it comes down to this:
We work with our friends; we don't care about anyone else. We don't even need a label really other than for major releases (like Primitive) where we need someone else to do it greater justice.

What was the original motivation/reason for naming the band TEB? Has the meaning or significance of the moniker changed at all in the period of time you've been able to develop as a band and people?

We're called The Endless Blockade for equal parts a love of Japanese hardcore the end result of a ritual to remove several obstacles in my life. The ritual worked, that aspect of the name is no longer needed and every song on Primitive is a cosmic "thank you" for that.
If anything we've devolved as a band and people.

Lots of splits, lots of vinyl. This flies in the face of what the overlords of the record selling industry are telling us peons about sales plummeting and the digital age. I'm assuming collectors drain your limited and coloured vinyl runs, but overall, how do you find the market for actual copies of your music?

We seem to do OK as far as sales go I guess, I wouldn't know. I mean, we're not going to be on the cover of Decibel or the free CD that comes with Terrorizer ever. I do think this band is selling less copies of releases than a band I was in over ten years ago was but we definitely sell things a lot faster.
The real things that have changed is the amount of time a release is fresh; by the time this issue of Decibel comes out Primitive will already be old news amongst most people who would already know about us. The whole reason for coloured vinyl and limited editions now is strictly to force people's hands into buying directly from you. If a kid at your show thinks he can get your record anytime he wants from a local record store then he's probably less likely to pick it up (this is the downfall of punks' better business and distribution sense). If you're selling something that he can only get at the show (some silk screened cover with blue vinyl for example), you're going to sell it immediately. No one wants to see a record they could have bought for ten bucks going for fifty on e bay three months later, even if they don't want to sell it on e bay. It still makes them feel good to be able to say "I have that record, it's worth $50", even if it isn't really worth $50…

How about a discography for those of us who haven't been paying attention?

Out:
Three demos
a few comps
Turn Illness Into a Weapon LP/ CD
split LP w/ Warzone Womyn
Come Friendly Bombs 7"
split LP w/ Hatred Surge
split LP w/ Iron Lung
Primitive LP/ CD
first demo with original three piece line up on 7"
Coming out in 2008:
Split 7" w/ Wadge
Split 7" w/ Agoraphobic Nosebleed
split 7" w/ Shank
collaboration LP w/ Bastard Noise
partial discography CD
remix CD of Primitive w/ Joshua Norton Cabal, Sixes, Nordvargr, Contagious Orgasm, Noah Creshevsky, Sickness and possibly one or two others, depending on space

How many of the dates on your upcoming tour are with Coffins? How did the Coffins dates come about?

Coffins are playing all their non-MDF dates with us. We presently share a record label so it seemed to be a natural thing for Dave (20 Buck Spin dude) to ask us if Coffins could play a week of shows with us when we tour in may.

I'm assuming still self-booked as far as tours and shows are concerned. Have you ever thought of handing over that job to a booking agent? Why/why not?

This band is 100% about the four of us. It's something we do because we genuinely need some kind of an outlet. If you sealed us from the rest of the world we'd just play our shit to four walls and a sink.
Anyone else is an outsider to the process and doesn't belong; we only let friends release our records and we only do splits with our friends. If we don't know you and you don't get us on a level that goes beyond "awesome, you guys sound like Crossed Out" we're not interested. We're genuinely grateful to anyone that helps us out in any way at all but only four people have any say in the band. Consequently we're not interested in booking agents at all and are only barely interested in a small number of record labels, band interviews and the usual trappings that come with being in a band.
We're less about DIY as a political practice and more about it as an isolationist tendency. We support musical elitism and exclusivity. We endorse the idea of a scene as a closed system with its own language and codes that must be learned properly to participate properly. We endorse scenes dying of natural causes and new ones being built in their wake.

What's your favourite tour story – the one that, when you tell it to a rapt audience, always seems to start with, "Dude, you gotta hear this!"?

We tend to conveniently (and purposefully) side step most wacky tour shenanigans on the whole. However one of our favourite tour stories that isn't merely mean spirited observation involves a master shoplifter/ martial artist, a elderly relative, a room covered floor to ceiling in human shit and a 6am distressed cry of "GRANDMA!!! NO!!!!!!"

What are your influences? Are you vegans? Are your influences vegans?

Magus Wampyr Daoloth and Naomi Klein are our influences. And 80s thrash, we love that shit; mosh maniacs in flipped up caps, that's us.