Victims, Aren't We All?

As somewhat stardom seemed almost in their grasp, Victim of Modern Age has fallen into hiatus. The band successfully courted Universal Warning Records into a marriage that found the Philadelphia label poised to market their new album ... until drummer Dan Robertson called it quits.

In June, The Times talked to members of VOMA about the struggle of their demo, their upcoming release and an ensuing tour that would take them to Cedar Falls, Iowa, and two shows in New York, including one at CBGB OMFUG, and all points in between to hawk their first full-length release. At the time it was unnamed, but that really wasn't important. What was important was UW was ready to pour tremendous promotional muscle behind the 13-song release, contingent on the all-important, get-the-word-out, gas-guzzling tour.

"On the verge of our almost completely planned half of the U.S. tour, our drummer got burned out," says singer and guitarist Allen Clements. "And I think his thinking was (over) our already growing commitment to the record label and just not seeing the returns. Dan is coming from a point where - and there is nothing wrong with this - he's opted not to go to school and not to really necessarily learn a trade or get a lot of work experience. He's a musician. He's a real musician, and I guess when I look back on it, it is amazing that he hung out as long as he did."

Being a small label, their hitch with UW didn't mean you would see VOMA sipping Kristol on MTV Cribs anytime soon. UW fronts their bands copies of their CDs and establishes a payment plan so the bands can repay them as they sell the albums through their touring and promotional efforts.

UW put out their four-song, pre-Clements, demo in 2002, but did not get behind the release, thanks in part to a printer's mistake that left UPC codes off the record and that it was such a short disc, making it hard to market. However, through VOMA's previous tours and local shows the band managed to move most of the 1,000 copies.

UW noticed the band - or actually the band noticed UW - when singer and guitarist Bobby Nixon received an e-mail about the label from another band signed to them. Interested, he sent UW one of the self-titled demos the band had cut, and they bit.

"It was a slim chance. I only sent it out to three labels because it was just an EP. I just wanted to see if anyone would reply, and they e-mailed us back the day that they got the CD in the mail and they wanted to release it," says Nixon of the late March 2002 coup.

To make up for the limited promotion of their demo, UW had lined up quite a marketing blitz for the album.

"This was everything. They had everything rolled in," says Clements. The label told Clements they had money saved up especially for the CD's promotion. In the plans: national distribution that would make it available in every record store's catalog, magazine advertisements and promotions, posters and a possible inclusion in a New Line Cinema soundtrack, which still might happen. Because the band will not be able to tour in support of the album, the record company has scaled back its involvement and the pressing of the disc, limiting it to about 500 copies.

VOMA had predicted that Robertson would pull out at one point and decided if he did they would immediately cancel their tour dates to preserve their good name. Dropping in a replacement behind the cymbals was never an option.

"There are a couple of reasons for that. One of them is that it is just not that easy. There was a time issue and, just an availability issue," says Clements. "Who can you grab in a month, train and expect to be out of town? Some people have families. Some people have school. We planned it specifically during school so we could hit college towns. So that becomes a big issue."

In preparation for the tour, Clements bought a van that the band helped pay for. With no tour, Clements rented the tour van out to a Mississippi band, The Recovery Project. However, he has reservations about selling it, in hopes that VOMA will one day ride again.

"We will continue somehow; I just don't know how long it will be until we will be able to go on a big tour again," he says. After August, Clements looks to regroup and recruit a new drummer. A few months of practice later, he says he hopes to take a 15-date tour of the eastern United States.



The band took its name from a line in A Clockwork Orange because of the way it sounded, but there could have been a deeper connection between the two.

In the 1962 book, and less the 1971 film, Anthony Burgess explores the danger of making men into something controlled, like clockwork, stating that humans are so ripe with potential - both good and bad. The band, on the other hand, defied being bound by a category or sound and instead chose to strike their own path along something once dubbed "math-indie-tech."

Asked about what went into forging the sound, Nixon, in June, said that the main factor was their musical influences and the bands they were into and, "We wanted to try to do something that was different from the stuff you hear on the radio."

Robertson agreed, stating, "Pretty much it's not anything we decided to do from the beginning. It just sort of happened because of everyone's own influence and background, coming from totally different areas ... "

"... all meshed together," Nixon concluded.

It was a strange mix of influences and backgrounds, from Nixon's love of Hum, Robertson's tenure in funk and blues bands - even opening up for B.B. King with Lingus - to guitarist and vocalist Allen Clements' longtime penchant for punk and indie rock.

As a result, summing up their sound was tough for even them. At the time, the band said Transworld Surf pegged it best in a review that called their four-song EP "A knife's-edge-up-and-down ride with loud louds and quiet quiets all jabbing at your heart and tearing your senses. This is a band that must be heard: math-indie-tech that will supply the needed power to your CD collection."

Nixon explained, "Math-ie means that it's kind of math-ie because of the timing and stuff. Indie rock is just a really wide variety of music ..."

"It's more like how you do it. It's not a description per se ..." Clements interjected.

" ... And tech just kind of glorifies it," Nixon said.

VOMA formed from the evolution and the ashes of other South Louisiana bands. Nixon first served with the group's original bass player, Nathan Carnes, in a Lake Charles band called Useless Cause. That band would evolve into another called Ponder. Later, two members left and Robertson was invited to play. Although he had never heard them before, Robertson played their material perfectly, and Victim of Modern Age was born. The name soon followed.

"We were pretty much just watching the movie," said Nixon. "Pretty much the climactic part of the movie is he does all this bad stuff his whole life and it finally catches back up to him. His friends beat him up because they're police officers. He goes back to the house where he raped a girl, and he was sitting at a table and he was starting to get real nervous because the old guy (the victim's husband) was starting to tell him the story about his wife even though he knew. He yelled, 'She was a victim of modern age!' And it was like, 'Wow.'"

Eventually VOMA started running with a Lafayette indie band by the name of Claymore, to which Clements belonged. Claymore and VOMA began doing shows together - with Claymore coming to Lake Charles to play at VOMA shows and VOMA coming to Lafayette to play at Claymore shows. When Claymore's schedule began to slow down and their demo received little label attention, Nixon asked Clements to play with VOMA. In October of 2002, as more and more of his time went to VOMA, Clements decided to leave, and Claymore went on hiatus. Their latest addition was Jason Decou, who replaced a departed Carnes. Decou played with Clements in a band called Drive-In Funeral, which Clements says had a similar sound to VOMA.

Since Robertson split, Nixon has stepped up, performing with his other band, Ballistic Missile, Clements is considering doing solo work and starting his own print zine, and Robertson skateboards and does background drumming for a Lake Charles comedian.

Before the hiatus, recent months found VOMA polishing off the record and gearing up for their tour. They were playing gigs around town and used one in early summer as a measuring stick for their new material on their full-length album.

That gig, at Bisbano's Cellar Door, found VOMA cramped into the corner of the pizza joint's basement debuting their new songs and playing all the old favorites to a lucky audience.

"We pretty much unleashed everything," related Nixon.

Even with the record almost complete, VOMA hadn't even named their new release. But names were being half-heartedly thrown around.

In the June interview, Robertson said he thought the name was going to be The Heart Will Beat, because he saw it on an advertisment in VOMA's newsletter. Clements quickly corrected him.

"No, I did that. I didn't mean it to be the name of the album. It was like a preview kind of thing. Hey, you're watching (a preview for) Free Willy, 'Willy is free June 2002.' That was the promo for it."

"The Heart Will Beat is not bad," remarked Nixon.

"It's going to be the last thing," quipped Clements.

"The Wall," Robertson offered as one last sarcastic suggestion. Since the interview, Nixon and Clements had agreed on The Heart will Beat. However, the tag that started out as a parody of movie promotion has taken on a more apt meaning.

"VOMA needs to be resuscitated," says Clements.