This interview was done with Blood For Blood Guitarist "White Trash" Rob, after a show at the Chance in Poughkeepsie (with My Ex-Band Vanishing Point). They tore the roof off the place that night.

TX: So how long have you guys been together?
Rob: Uh, I think it's five years now.

TX: You guys seem to crossover a lot of different kinds of music, do you guys take influences...
Rob: From all different kinds of music? Yeah me and Budda listen to everything, we're like the main song writers. I write all the music and Me and Bhudda split up the lyrics. He listened to Oi his whole life. I listened to Punk Rock, everything from the Misfits to The Exploited to The Dead Boys, Suicidal Tendencies. I love old hardcore, that's pretty much the music style I think we play. Old hardcore used to sit in the midrange between punk rock and...
TX: And metal...
Rob: ...And Oi, yeah exactly.

TX: So how long have you guys been on tour for?
ROB: We're actually not on tour right now, we're just doing big weekend tours. We'll start on like a Thursday and stop on a Sunday.
TX: So you're going back to Boston during the week?
ROB: Yeah. We're shortly going on tour seven days up in Canada with Straight Face and All Out War. Then we're going over to Europe for two weeks and then we're coming back and we're gonna be touring from here to the west coast with SNFU and Madball.

TX: How is the Boston scene?
ROB: It's incredible. Like a good Boston show now will bring in 500 kids and there'll be no fights. The only problem is nobody will book them. Nobody will book the all ages shows because of the violence. Because like Boston, in my travels, was like one of the worst scenes for violence for like the past five years. Like New York was real bad in the late 80's and it sort of calmed down because they lost their scene for a while. Boston was like that. Presently all the clubs won't deal with any of the hardcore shows because of all the violence, and they don't want to have all the extra security, and have like the lawsuits and stuff like that. But when you do find a place to book a show tons of bands come out. "Reach The Sky", "In My Eyes", "Ten Yard Fight", lots of good bands.

TX: Is there any differences between the scenes, there and here?
ROB: Every scene is a little bit different. The main difference is that right now, major cities, the big bulk of the scene will sort of be given to one style of music. Like Boston, right now, is real big with the old school, youth crew kind of hardcore. That's like the majority of the kids. Western Mass is all like that "Converge" death metal shit. You run into scenes that are mostly like Rap-core and stuff like that. It's all different.

TX: So how did you guys hook up with Victory (records)?
ROB: We drove 17 hours to play a free show out there at Bull Dog Records. Somebody hit me in the head with a 40 ounce, smashed a 40 ounce over my head and like, Bhudda and a couple of the guys we came down with went into the audience to find out why people were throwing bottles at us, and I guess that they were throwing bottles at somebody else, but it happened to hit me. The guys that started the altercation were a bunch of big drunk skinhead nazi types and uh...a big riot insued. And there was a lot of violence and stuff like that and Victory was impressed at the fact that, number one, that we'd drive 17 hours to play a free show, they thought that was dedicated. Number two, I guess, that we didn't take any shit.

TX: Do you get pissed off at the rumours that start circulating? Like I heard that you guys and Hatebreed had some sort of uh...
ROB: Oh, like a beef or something? That happened like four years ago now. Four year ago mike?
(MIKE from All Out War was standing near us)
Mike: What?
ROB: That Connecticut incident?
Mike: Yeah.
ROB: We just played with Hatebreed the other night, I mean some of our best friends in the whole music scene are the SDS guys from Connecticut, Death Threat and all those guys. That stuff is so squashed.

TX: So does that stuff piss you off that it's still circulating?
ROB: No, no because people got to have something to talk about. And I don't really care what people talk about so... That's been over for like a really long time, they're like really good friends of ours. I would consider the Death Threat guys and SDS some of my best friends in the music scene.

TX: There has been a lot of flack toward Victory over the past few months and some of their bands, do you think that's unjust? I mean some people accuse them of being like a major label while maintaining the um...
ROB: Independent image?
TX: Yeah.
ROB: I honestly don't care. I'm not going to speak for any of the other bands on Victory. Honestly with the exception of Hatebreed, I don't really listen to much on Victory. All Out War, who's now coming out on Victory and Skarhead, which is another new band, but that's neither hand nor deal with me. Victory does a good job by us. We just want to get music out in front of the people that will relate to it, and Victory helps you do that. And I'll say this as a disclaimer, because we get a lot of questions nowadays like "How is it now that you're all set on Victory?". That's a complete crock of shit. I still have to work a job. We have no money in our pockets. We all live in scummy, 16 people apartments, splitting like 1 or 2 room apartments and stuff like that. There's no money. Maybe if you sell like 75,000 albums or something like that, but we're not even close to that. So no, we're not making any money, I just say that because a lot of people...

TX: It's a misconception.
ROB: Yeah, a misconception, exactly.

TX: Are there any bands you really enjoy playing with?
ROB: Hardcore or otherwise?
TX: Otherwise...anything...any memorable shows?
ROB: I always have a great time playing with All Out War. I love playing with Death Thread. The tour with Madball and Skarhead was one of the best times of my life. That was a blast.
(To Mike) You being a smart ass over there?
The Ducky Boys we'll be playing with them, the Business, it was a great time playing with them. Sheer Terror, 'cause you go and drink with Paul after.

TX: Do you have any future plans for the next few months?
ROB: Yeah, we're gonna try and tour as much as we can. Tour on as many different kinds of bills as possible, because like you said, we have a lot of crossover. And we're gonna be doing a bunch of split seven inches, one with Floorpunch, one with the Ducky Boys, one with Straight Face. We're doing a big East vs. West coast split seven inch on Victory with us and The Trouble from Boston and Pressure Point and Powerhouse from the west coast. That's about it right now.

TX: Cool, that's about it, thanks for the interview.
ROB: Cool.

The picture on this page was taken from the Victory Records website. The photographer is noted on the photo.

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