If you’re a regular on the London gig circuit then Dysteria is probably a name that’s passed across your radar; if not, then you’re probably attending the wrong gigs and need to rectify that immediately. Formed from a union of two of London and Brighton’s better known gig promoters, as well as featuring members of bands such as Hate Fuck,Who Cares?, Nebudkanezza and Dead Existence, Dysteria don’t fit into either hardcore or grindcore categories. Instead, the band have pummelled out their own space between the two and have angrily set up camp. Following the release of their debut ‘Fuck the Future’ earlier this year, the four-piece are already working on new material. We caught up with vocalist ‘J’ and bassist ‘M’ to talk about what’s going on in the world of Dysteria.
AN: A quick Google search of your name yields all kinds of results from marine life to muscle contractions. What meaning do you guys put behind your name and how did you come up with it?
M: It’s kinda in the spirit of the D[is]-beat names, and as a response to the historically sexist connotations within the source of the concept or term “hysteria”, but also with a little nod to Dystopia too!
AN: Give us the 411 on how you guys started – how did you meet, where did you form and how did you get things started?
M: We all play(ed) in other bands and / or promoted shows in London so we pretty much knew each other anyway, but the catalyst was one of those getting drunk and whatever else in a bar at 4am conversations, between two of us, along the lines that we’d both liked a bunch of crusty and hardcore stuff for years so “let’s start a fucking band maaan”, you know, the usual shit. Except then the shit actually came together! Riffs started pissing out and before we knew it we had a bunch of tracks ready for vocals and it spiralled on from there. It’s probably good that not all of our 4am intoxicated ideas come to fruition quite that easily!
AN: There’s an obvious collective love of grind and hardcore within the band – what in particular influences you the most?
M: Musically our reasons for wanting to start something were rooted in our long term love for the unrelenting wall of noise and pissed off sounds within crust / käng / nasty hardcore, whatever you wanna fucking call it. Collectively, or more directly to the music, we all bring a variety of influences to the table which I think moved us slightly away from that; 90’s sludgey filth like Cavity and other crust-sludge fusion like Rawradarwar are in there, newer dark crust like Agnosy and Agrimonia helped push us along the way, old favourites such as Nausea are most definitely an input, I think the HHIG influences are kinda obvious too, there’s even some beatdown vibes creeping in to some of the songs. We’re basically a sum of our parts! Although most of us dig grind too, the grindier influences as far as Dysteria as a whole is concerned, if you could call them that, probably stem more from things like Heresy and Dropdead and more power violence stuff than actual straight up deathy grind. Having said all that, that’s just our musical influences, I’m not saying we actually sound like any of those bands. To be honest our influences probably stem more from things like lack of sleep, bad days, comedowns, and of course a grating disbelief at the actions of a large number of those people who we happen to share the space of this city with.
AN: Do you guys have a particular writing process? How much of your material is improvised?
M: We mainly bring riffs to the table and then build the drums in to solidify them. Vocals are laid over next, a pretty straight forward way of doing things really. We’re not trying to make crazy technical shit… it’s been said a million times, and it’s true, that a lot of the anger and vibe can get lost when shit gets too tech, although some of our newer stuff is trying to push the standard d-beat envelope a little. We’ve always tried to keep it dynamically alive a tad too by incorporating the slower doomy breakdowns in some of the songs. In the studio we just recorded the music live in one session, and then added the vocals in another. It was pretty quick to be honest. It’s the imperfections that make a record what it is… that’s our excuse anyway! Nick at Dissident Sound Industry, a great studio collective in Tottenham where we recorded, made the whole thing gel together and got a great overall sound laid down for us.
AN: ‘Fuck the Future’ is focuses heavily on the environment and has an apparent political agenda – talk us through the record and what it means for you guys.
M: It was kind of a cathartic explosion for us to vent a load of shit on this record so it ended up with pretty much every track focusing on a different theme.
J: Yeah, It’s a whole range of political and social issues that matter to me and all of us I think – ‘the environment’, per se, only being the first song, ‘Thirst’, which is about how we’re running out of fresh water, fast, and the fat cats up top don’t think that a basic necessity for life is a human right but a commodity they should profit from. ‘Carvery’ is about ever expanding class divisions and how Margaret Thatcher was a soulless, heartless cunt who thought this was how society should be ordered (note: she died around the time it was written.) Epitaphs about the corporate world feigning interest and regret in human tragedy when it’s their neglect and disregard for workers that caused it, inspired by the faux outpouring of sympathy after that garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed. ‘Unearth’ about how it’s easy to lose sight of your humanity when you’re brought up in a culture that values and rewards greed, Jimmy Reid’s speech at Glasgow University in 1971 obviously playing a powerful part in this one ( it’s also the sample – read the whole speech, it’s incredible.) ‘Quadrapeligic’ is in reference to an article I read by a man who fought in WWII and who talked about what they thought were fighting for, how they saw society improve afterwards, and how now he sees the NHS being sold off, social housing be dismantled, benefits being stigmatised and how he now feels the horror he and his brothers experienced was in all vain. ‘Invalides’ is about being a woman in a world that regards your existence as trivial and how it’s entirely maddening – had been reading about Emily Davidson that day. Mephistopheles is about the paradox of modernity, how “progress” has its price, and specifically in reference to a book by Marshall Berman called ‘All That Is Solid Melts Into Air’ and his Marxist analysis of ‘Faust’.
M: ‘Defaultocrat’ is a sort of intermission in the middle of the album, that’s a general rant about those in positions of power being so tangled in a web of blind sighted greed, corruption and desperation that they’re willing to justify the sacrifice of the lives of those they’re (attempting to) control in order to just get a little further ahead of their perceived competitors. Kinda keeping up with the Jones’ on crack I guess.! Fucked up how apathetic some people can become.
AN: What does the future have in store for Dysteria?
J: We have half a new record written, some more shows, a few festival things next year and we hope to have a vinyl release of FTF out across Europe by early next year too.
AN: You guys have an amazing live presence and clearly love what you do. What are the best and worst things about playing live?
M: This is still a relatively new project so the best thing about playing live is probably just getting to play with other bands that we’re into. Getting drunk and smashing out some angry shit for 25 minutes is a bonus. The worst thing is the hangovers… we’ve all been around a bit now so they hurt more these days! Oh, and sitting in traffic on the way to do it all sucks too.
AN: Five grind/hardcore bands that people should be listening to but probably aren’t?
M: There are too many good bands out there to just name five. Music should always be about self-discovery anyway. I’d say instead, just support live music, go to one of these five venues and you’ll be likely to find good things happening and killer bands in said fields: The Bird’s Nest (Deptford) / T-Chances (Tottenham) / The Cowley Club (Brighton) / The 1 in 12 (Bradford) / Stuck On A Name Studios (Nottingham).
(Interview by Angela Davey)
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