INTERVIEW
RENTOKILL
by Christer Davidsson, October 2006

Hey! How are you guys doing?

Jack: Hey, we're fine, thanks! My name's Jack and I play the lead guitar and do the main vocals. After really great gigs this summer we had a short break for nearly a month, to concentrate on new songs, and to finish our upcoming record, and now we're sort of relaxed and prepared for intensive touring in the cold time of the year.

For how long have you been playing together?

Me and Bertl, our drummer, have been fooling around for somewhat ten years now, but the real kick-off in this line-up happened in early 2003, so it's been almost four years now. It took us some time to realize how interactive punkrock/HC can be, and how far you can go by organizing things in a D.I.Y. manner. So it takes time to get in touch with enough promoters to plan a decent tour, or to get many people to review your records, or to get your stuff heard by labels, but we're still heavily improving on this.

Listening to your songs, I get a feeling you're influenced a lot by bands such as Good Riddance, Strike Anywhere and Propagandhi, am I right?

Yep, I guess you're right. Those bands do not only stand out for exceptional music, but have also maintained a strong political message for all those years. There's some sort of hype for political content in (punkrock) music right now, guess the music industry is trying to "sell the revolution" to the kids of today, but i believe true message will always find it's way to people who are willing to absorb and reflect it. The four of us listen to a huge range of music, from The Clash to Tom Waits, and you sometimes may find a CD of classical music in our CD-player, but i guess punkrock/HC is on top for most of the time.

I think your type of hardcore/ punk stands out compared the average sound. Most bands I've come across working with this webzine play street punk, punk’n’roll and that -77-ish sound. How come you started to play this brand of music?

That's a difficult question. After all, it's hard to define a point where we "decided" to play exactly this kind of music, I guess it's just the average of our influences and the things we like. You're right, there’s a lot of street punk and stuff going on, but there's also loads of bands playing our type of music, or skapunk, or emo or whatever. To be honest, I think that the European music scene is as diverse as any other scene too.

To be honest I really have no idea of what’s going on in the Austrian punk scene. Do you have a lot of good bands down there?

Yes. Actually, there's a lot going on in Austria right now, 2006 has unfortunately seen the split of great bands like JAN FEAT. UDSSR and BOUNZ THE BALL, and left us in uncertainty of the destiny of ANTIMANIAX, but bands like RED LIGHTS FLASH and EPHEN RIAN are constantly proving that Austrian bands can very well support well known bands on their European tours. We’re stunned by the new release "Corruption concealed (under deceptive slogans)" from a band called ASTPAI, and ESTATE put out a great album this year too. THE PLAGUE MASS is going to release a new record this year as well, and I totally think that it will be a burner. And there's this Austrian D.I.Y. punkrock bandcommunity NEUSTADTPUNK.NETWORK which we are also a member of. They have lots of good bands and are actually very supportive with everything they do. You should really check all of their bands out. A lot of kids start participating in several bands or projects, therefore making the scene more diverse. There are a lot of younger bands coming up, as well as a lot of young but decently working promoters, hence a lot of D.I.Y. shows.

www.myspace.com/neustadtpunknetwork
www.myspace.com/antimaniax
www.myspace.com/astpai
www.myspace.com/theplaguemass
www.myspace.com/estatemusic

What about shows? Are there a lot of kids showing up at the shows?

Well, of course you'll have no problems getting kids to an Anti-Flag or Rise Against show, but it's more difficult with club shows with only local bands, as everywhere. We experienced a lot of smaller festivals where you have a thousand kids showing up, but mainly for going out and socializing, especially in smaller towns where you don't have any clubs or an established live-scene. Those shows are good especially for charity functions and stuff, but sometimes bands ask themselves if it makes sense to play for a rather big audience that is not really interested in their music. But sometimes it's quite hard to get dedicated club shows properly filled, and that usually works only on weekends. It ’s a small country, after all...

Have you been playing any shows outside of Austria?

We've been on tour in the U.K. twice; we played in all the countries around Austria, and a couple of shows in Belgium and Holland. We had the chance to play some festivals in the Czech Republic, Germany , Hungary or Belgium. It’s quite hard work to get a bunch of shows to make it a tour, to get you further away without spending everything on gas money. We have no booking support for central Europe, so it's a lot of D.I.Y. work and time to spend. We're currently working on dates in Spain, Portugal and France for spring 2007, and we'll definitely go back to the U.K. a third time, and maybe make a few dates in northern Europe in summer, that'd be great!

You're heading out on tour together with Red Lights Flash pretty soon. Tell me about that.

RED LIGHTS FLASH came up with the idea of setting up a tour with clubhows in Austria, only on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. So five weekends in a row, each in a different area. So it's still a "tour", and pays the printing of posters and flyers and the promotion via radio stations and zines. It's a great idea. Christoph from RLF booked it all by himself, and we're very happy to be able to participate. We're putting out a split 10" with unreleased songs by both bands, and the whole tour will retain a strong political touch, having an Austrian fair trade organization on every show. I think it shows that it's possible to book shows where bands, promoters and guests profit, without being forced to work with big companies to sponsor things and therefore sell yourself.

You got a record out called "Back to Convenience". Tell me about it.

Actually, "Back to Convenience" is pretty old, it originally came out in 2004, and in 2005 outside Austria. We've recently finished the work on our upcoming new album, and we're talking to labels right now about potential release possibilities. We're of course still all committed to the previous album, we play the songs live, and we managed to get a deal with IN-N-OUT RECORDS to release it in Japan, great thing! We're very happy about all the positive feedback we get on the album, so we hope to continue to convince people with what we do on our new album.

What else have you released?

Besides to very old demo EP's, we only released a split CD with 5 other bands from all over the world on ENEMY ONE RECORDS from Brazil. It's also very likely that they will put out our new album in South America. The split only contains songs from "Back to Convenience", however, it's not really something new. Aside from the split release with RED LIGHTS FLASH, we'd love to put out a split with ANTILLECTUAL from Holland, maybe the most political band in Europe. We're close friends, and that's a good reason to work on something collectively.

What do you write about in general?

On our new album, there's a strong focus on the mainstream media, about what TV and newspapers tell people to believe what they want to see and read. We had a lot of environmental issues recently, and I wrote a song about the conflict in the Caucasus area. As you have a lot of refugees from Chechnya in Austria, you suddenly get to hear stories that the mainstream media will never tell, especially not when it's controlled by the Russian government. I hate it when people tell you "you know, I’m not very political, it just doesn’t interest me“, and they all own cell phones, nike shoes and cars. We wrote a song called "the political aspect of unpolitical thinking" about this. People keep arguing over vegetarism with statements like tradition or health and they don't even want to see what's really going on out there. That brings me back to corporate controlled media, where capitalism tries to keep the smallest parts of the system working, maintaining people happy in front of their TV-sets while the planet's dying outside. And it truly is dying.

Right-wing parties are gaining trust in Austria. How does this affect you?

Although the socialist party won the elections two weeks ago, you can see in the result that 50 percent of the people voted for the conservative right wing. We now have two extreme right wing parties in the parliament, and a conservative strong enough to control what a potential new government will do, even though they fucked this country up within the last 7 years. Everyone is affected by that, although many people don't see the connection between economy and politics, or they don't want to, who knows? Soon we'll have drinking-water privatized, social benefits cut and immigration laws further tightened, although they already contravene the Geneva Conventions today. You have homeless refugees in the streets, with no hope for any future, and the process of immigration sees no progress at all. People don't ask why somebody from Africa actually has no other chance than to leave his country and climb the Spanish enclaves or end starving to death in an overcrowded boat to an European island.

Do you think the punk-movement can make a difference?

Well, that's an interesting point; though the question may appear simple.
In a direct approach, we all have seen the punk-voter movement before the elections in the United States in 2004, and all the bands officially taking stand. It was all about motivating kids to vote, but on the other hand it looks like the republican voters have been motivated as well. You suddenly had christian-/ right wing-/ conservative bands do the same thing on the other side. The voter turnout suddenly was way higher than in 2000, and in the end they have the same shit again. I think many kids can be inspired to think about what's going on, but in the end everybody has to experience things for themselves. I believe that punk can help us understand how to interact with others, help us find new approaches of independent yet collective thinking and to explore new ways of living and participating in and "outside" of this society.

What do you think about punk nowadays?

It would be a good idea - just joking!
I think that the punk movement partially suffers from the general sell-out in music, but there will always be kids that don't go conform with what they are intended to do or buy. It doesn't matter if the mainstream wants you to consume nike shoes or spiked belts, some people will always retain a feeling that there is too much coercion going on in this so-called free society, and there will always be people that will positively experience the power of independent interaction. I think this can be supported by independent and open source media like the internet today, as long as we all keep it this way.

Anything else you’d like to add?

First of all, we would like to thank those people who supported us in the last years without any material interest. You know who you are! We would like to encourage promoters as well as bands we met to carry on with what they do. Nothing feels better than to hear fresh inspired music, or to be offered a mattress in a foreign city, to be able to talk to different people, to see different places, to experience a little bit more of this wide planet. Keep it up!



LINKS:

www.rentokill.com

www.myspace.com/rentokill

www.neustadtpunk.net

www.myspace.com/neustadtpunknetwork