Starkweather: Sheer Stubbornness and Musical Brutality Visit Salt Lake for a One-Show Tour

Sustaining for anastounding 18years, Philadelphia’sStarkweather has beena cornerstone of modernhardcore since theirpioneering sounds in1989 to their most recentrelease, 2005’s Croatoan.With two new releases onthe way, the band showsno signs of stopping orslowing down. Despiteno national tour on thehorizon, Starkweatherhas formed a uniquebond with SLC–on Dec.6, the band will be inSalt Lake for a one-stopshow sponsored byGrudge City Activities.Succinct and well-spoken,Rennie Resmini andTodd Forkin sat downwith SLUG Magazine toexplain how the group hasmaintained their presenceand relevance for nearly20 years.

SLUG: To what doesStarkweather owe itslongevity?
Ronnie Resmini:Sheer stubbornness.We won’t quit as longas we continue to enjoycreating music and canevolve, ever so slightly,as musicians. Music is anoutlet for us–it isn’t ourjob. We don’t tour, so wedon’t rattle each other’snerves by being confinedin a van 24/7, 52 weeks.
Todd Forkin: I agreewith Rennie that sheerstubbornness is the secretto our success. I alsothink that it’s a necessaryand healthy way for usto exorcise our personaldemons. Without this I’mnot sure what I would dowith myself.

SLUG: Despite outlastingseveral trends inhardcore, Starkweather never succumbed to imitating popular styles. How do youguys maintain and evolve your musical style over time?
RR: Probably becauseour influences were neverlimited or restricted to onespecific style. We grewup listening to a diversecatalog of music. Growingup I was fortunate to havebeen exposed to a lotof different music. I justhappened to be intriguedby the more "outsider"type of bands: Amebix,Voivod, Articles of Faith,Void, Die Kreuzen. Mosthaving a more atonal,dissonant sound. Probablywhy I tend to gravitate tocomposers like Nono,Lachenmann, Varese,Xenakis. So, it translatesto the overall soundand style of this band. Idefinitely agree that if youcompare and contrast ourearly music to what we’redoing now you can tellit’s the same band. Thereis more musicality andbroader palette of sound,but it’s the same group ofbarbarians.
TF: Like Rennie, I startedlistening to punk andhardcore a long, long timeago and though I hadn’tmet Ren until the mideighties, we were bothdrawn to and influenced bythe same outsider bands.Any interview you readwith us is sure to mentionbands like Amebix,Voivod and Articles OfFaith as influences andI grew up listening to allof the above bands thatRennie mentioned. In lateryears I’ve been heavilyinfluenced by Gorguts,who were the first bandto create a sound thatmatched what was goingon in my head. It was likethe mashing of gears.We really have little to nointerest in what’s going onin hardcore or mainstreammetal these days. We gettogether in our bunkerevery Saturday and whatwe are as people is whatcomes out as the Starkweather sound. There are different positive and negativeinfluences on us now, greater disappointments, and, speaking for myself, somepersonal demons that absolutely need a healthy way to come out.

SLUG: What do you think makes Utah such a hotbed of Starkweather fans?
RR: I’m baffled by the entire thing. We have little pockets of rabid fans while otherareas are indifferent. I have no idea what is going on in Utah if this is truly the case.I’m curious to see how this show is. We knew something was up with SLC from aHellfest show we were on. After we played a bunch of people from SLC introducedthemselves to us. Then, when we did one of RalphyBoy/Dissassociate’sbirthday bashes at CBGB’s another SLC group came out to catch this show withDissassociate, Bloodlet, us and others.
TF: This is absolutely a mystery to me. I always pictured us an East Coast band,formed in a filthy city at a filthy time, and I’m not sure what ANYONE, let alonepeople from Salt Lake City, see in us. I know that while we have only a handful offans, their commitment and rabid intensity is surprising and welcome.



SLUG: What, in youropinion, is the "golden ageof hardcore"?
RR: Early ‘80s. Hardcorewas urgent, honestsounding. It had yet tobecome stagnant andmired in ritual behaviorand sound. The earlieststuff had a primal intensitythat’s tough to rival. Therewas an air of danger aboutthe scene back then thatwas authentic. A complete"Us vs. Them" feeling. Formyself, by the mid ‘80s,things ran their course.Sure, there are somebands during the late‘80s, early ‘90s that arevital, but for the most parta lot of stuff, particularlyaround here, hardcorewas the equivalent ofdumbed down metal or ifit was going in a differentdirection, it was almostpop or emo – nothing tomy liking. To me, hardcorewas about ferociousenergy over accuracy. Myfavorite early hardcorebands will always beArticles of Faith, Void,Germs, United Mutation,Crucifix, CCM, DieKreuzen, Rites of Spring,Poison Idea. Later periodstuff would be bands likeBeyond Possession,Born Against,Rorschach, AntiochArrow, La Gritona,Deadguy, Coalesce.
TF: I’m not really sure thatthere was a golden ageof hardcore. If there was,I guess for me it was theearly Boston bands (TheF.U.’s, Jerry’s Kids,DYS and The Freeze),and the DC scene, whichwas a pretty special timefor me. I remember thefirst time I heard the TeenIdles 7", and especiallythe first time I heard MinorThreat’s "Look BackAnd Laugh." There wasa visceral reaction anda sense that I had finallyfound outsider freaks thatfelt the way I did. By 1984,I felt that things had prettymuch run their course and bands were starting to sound the same, the lyrics weregetting dumbed down, and the collective conscience had died. For a brief momentthings were revived by the DC crew with Beefeater, Rites Of Spring, Embrace anda few other bands creating what they called Revolution Summer. By the end of‘85, whatever I loved about hardcore had died. From that point on I was inspiredand influenced by individual bands, but I started to feel unwelcome in a scene that Iloved from its birth.

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