Foto-© Nolan Knight
Es ist kalt in Hamburg, so kalt wie schon lange nicht mehr. Ich sitze in der S-Bahn und höre Kick, einen der Hype-Songs aus Militarie Guns neuem Album God Save The Gun. Ich steige auf der Reeperbahn aus und trotte Richtung Molotow. In der Venue angekommen begrüßt mich Frontmann Ian Shelton.
Als erstes fällt ihm mein Heartagram-Tattoo auf und wir werden uns schnell einig, dass Tattoos vorm 25. Lebensjahr meist keine gute Idee sind. Ich frage ihn, was er momentan gerne hört, und er holt aus, dass ihm das neue A$AP Rocky Album gut gefällt, insbesondere der Track Punk Rocky. Ich stimme vollends zu. Eine weitere Obsession sei die Beatles-Version von Please Mister Postman. Ich nicke erneut zustimmend.
Your album God Save The Gun came out in October last year. Are you happy with the audience and media responses that it got?
So happy, yeah. It’s been really great to see the way people have received it and at live shows, we are getting the feedback that those songs are the ones everyone wants to hear, you know? Last night we played a song that we’ve never really played before, Maybe I’ll Burn My Life Down and the crowd sang it so loud and we didn’t even know that people liked this song. When it was released, it was a great moment of having people share their experiences that they thought were similar to what I was talking about. It felt really great to feel understood because you can’t really recreate the feeling of understanding. That’s something that has to happen naturally. And it felt like it really happened and I couldn’t be more excited with the way it went.
Militarie Gun went through several line-up changes before arriving at the current formation. How did that stability influence the writing and recording of the album?
I mean, the stability was everything. You know, Life Under The Gun was a record that we rehearsed twice before going into the studio. It was a very rushed thing. Because the demos were basically identical to the final product. I could play you the demos and you’ll be like, yeah, that’s exactly what’s on the record. Where with this (God Save The Gun), we had the time to arrange as a group and to allow everyone to put their personality onto the recording and really making it a group effort. It feels like we’re finally a band. We had people that just couldn’t afford to give us their time before and now we have people here who are all very dedicated and it feels exactly where we needed to end up. I sometimes wish that that journey of finding this line-up could have been quicker but I am glad for the journey that we went on to arrive here.
It was probably supposed to be that way.
Yeah, exactly. I very much believe in the cosmic ways and this feels very cosmic.
Tell me about the intro. Why did you want to begin the album with that memo? Was there ever a version of the album that didn’t begin so directly or did that opening feel inevitable from the start?
When we finally got into listening to it front to back, it felt like just starting with the energy of B A D I D E A was not true to the journey the record would take. It was very much the pairing of melancholy, anger, fun and self-destruction. And so, it was kind of important to drop into a moment that shows you the background and foreshadows the journey that the record takes. We wanted you to turn on the record and understand the headspace that it was created in.
It’s such a smooth transition as well.
Yeah, when we figured it out, it was like, how was this not always there? You know, as we’re writing, I’m figuring out the sequence of the songs to see which songs feel good together. (…) I think about sequence with the live set and am trying to make it an emotional journey as well. It’s very important for the ebb and flow and the descent. I think the record is very much a descent. And then at the very end, we try to lift you out of that descent. The record very much exists in a tunnel. It exists in a very dark place. And it was so important to have light at the end of the tunnel and to have something to be heading towards as you’re going into the final act of the record. That was all very very intentionally thought out.
Despite the darkness of the lyrics, the album sounds quite poppy and light at times. Was this a reflection of how you were feeling at that time?
Definitely. But, I think that pop at its best form has something to say. I think that rock and roll in its earliest form was a pop format. It strayed from that over time. But all the stuff, all these Phil Spector records, all the things that we’re obsessed with, was just called pop. The Beatles were called a pop group, they weren’t called a rock band. So the stuff we’re influenced by is poppy. (…) I have always approached all of the worst parts of my life and the way I tell them to other people as if they’re comedic stories and not overbearingly dramatic, terrible things. I’m saying, isn’t this situation that’s born of stupidity and selfishness … isn’t it ridiculous that someone would feel this way? Isn’t it ridiculous that someone would do this to someone else? And so, I’ve always framed all of my worst experiences through trying to make them funny as a way to cope with them. That has always been my tool. So, I think it makes sense in the context of our songs that they are that way.
The album artwork portrays you as a cult-like figure. Can you explain the vision behind that cover?
So much of what I started thinking about after finishing the record was the CIA started cults. And so much of what we’re sold for as wellness is really undermining you. Religion, recovery, self-help, drugs and alcohol – it’s all a band-aid. It’s all meant to temporarily make you feel better but in reality, it is actually making it all much worse. And for the most part, it’s all evilly sold to you. And that felt like the world that the record existed in. Convincing myself I was making my life better with drugs and alcohol. Or if you think that religion is your go-to or whatever else – the only thing that can save you is yourself. At the time, with everything that I was going through, I really wanted to just be able put my hands to the sky and be rescued. But that is not the reality that anyone can have and so I was just trying to recreate that. We were looking at these cults that were very much sabotaging their followers and wanted to make a statement about that.
In God Owes Me Money you sing „Post-traumatic feels too dramatic | You’re lucky your memory is just static | It’s burned too bright into my eyes I don’t know how we survived | (…) Don’t know why I was left outside | God owes me money, I’ll get it in time”. Can you elaborate on the meaning of this quote?
Referencing the idea of „God owes me money, I’ll get it in time“ is saying, I’m going to take all of this, and I’m going to use it to my benefit. I think that blaming a God that nobody knows exists is a very silly concept. Because I think in situations of familial trauma and familial addiction, the thing is that it’s handed down as far as I can see in my family tree. Addiction has been a part of it and it’s just somewhat of a curse that follows. I’ve inherited the addiction. The addiction comes from my parents. It comes from their parents. It came from their parents. And so, what can you blame? You just have to break the cycle. And I feel happy in the ways in which I feel I have broken the cycle, but also a huge part of it is attempting to also have to take accountability in that. I think I’ve tried to use my position as a person that people listen to, of saying, I have fucked up. I have hurt people. And the way that I grew up informed the way that I have been in relationships, which means they haven’t always been the healthiest. I would like to change that and make it better for the future. And the only way to do that is to actually own up to it and attempt better. But pretending that I’m just a good person and that never made any mistakes, that’s evil.
Did it make you feel less alone to see that so many people resonate with it?
Yeah, definitely. I was making the joke the other day online that military gun is music for drug addicts and mental patients. Those are the people we relate to. We relate to people who have really hard life experiences, which means that we also know people who’ve made really bad decisions and we don’t shy away from those people. We don’t shut them out because of their bad decisions. We embrace them and try to have honest conversations about what a better life looks like.
Modest Mouse singer Isaac Brock is featured on the track Isaac’s Song. How did this joint effort came into being?
We were lucky enough to have him sing on the record and say something I think is really important. I think his part on the record is a little bit of a check on the sadness of the ways in which you’ve talked yourself into how bad everything is. Where it’s not necessarily true. A lot of depression and the worst parts of life are really you telling yourself that things are bad. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re actually that bad.
So him saying how to talk you out of what you’ve talked yourself into before Thought You Were Waving is a gut check. It’s meant to call bullshit a little bit.
Are you still playing in the band Regional Justice Center?
Yes, we have a show coming up.
Where?
In the States. The background of the band is that it was a band centered around my brother’s incarceration. My brother can’t leave the country so we’ll never play Europe
How does your relationship and experience differ from playing in this band compared to Militarie Gun? Does each band project serve you in a different way?
They definitely serve me in a different way. It’s meant to express different parts of my personality. I think that I’m very blunt in all of my songwriting but RJC is meant to be blunt in a very violent or aggressive way. Really hit you over the head where Militarie Gun is so much more a bluntness of saying I feel this way and maybe causing discomfort in the honesty of that. There’s such intimacy in those bands because this last Regional Justice Center record was my brother getting out of prison and becoming the singer of the band instead of me and trying to hand the opportunities that I’ve received off onto him and have him experience positive emotions despite the past that he has.
It must have been really hard to grow up without your brother.
My brother was younger than me. He got locked up when he was 18 and I was in my 20s. He had such a weird past and I’ve been put into a role that’s not necessarily so much of a brother and more somewhere between that and a parent. I believe in the restorative power of art. Seeing the ways in which him coming out into the world and people caring who he is and receiving attention and having the ability to be creative and express something, I think has given him the ability to not be tempted by past behaviors. I wish that I could hand that to every person coming out of a similar situation.
You’re not only frontman, singer and drummer. You also direct your music videos. How do you approach the creative process for these visuals?
For the most part, at least for the first music video of an album cycle, it’s very important for it to jump off and expand the message of the song. So much of what B A D I D E A is, is about kind of cheering on your bad decisions. You make bad decisions because they’re fun. Not because they’re bad. Not because you wouldn’t do them if they didn’t feel like they provided you value. (…) I think music videos, at their best, touch on the ethos and expand the idea of the song. If you do it right, maybe nobody knows that you’re doing it because you’re just making it fun.
