View Blog
Add to My Friends
Share The Suicide Machines

The Suicide Machines

These are strange and dangerous times. War. Weak economy. Weapons of mass destruction that are missing—or weren’t there in the first place. Debilitating gasoline prices. World leaders we have no faith in. A populace that feels too disenfranchised to even hope it can affect change. What’s a punk band to do in the wake of all this? The brave ones “Rise up!� as The Suicide Machines declare on their new album, War Profiteering is Killing Us All, and let ‘em know that it ain’t over ‘til...well, maybe it’ll never be over, and the long-lived quartet serves notice that it’ll never stop fighting, either. But as frontman Jason Navarro notes late in the album, “This is no manifesto. This is no propaganda.� War Profiteering... is, in fact, a typically ferocious listening experience for the Detroit crew, a collection of 14 battle hymns that gallop by in half an hour with more adrenalin than you’ll find in an average hospital emergency room. Dan Lukacinsky’s guitar leaps from metallic thunder to ska syncopation. Bassist Rich Tschirhart and drummer Ryan Vanderberghe turn tricky dynamics on a dime, without so much as a stutter step. Navarro and Lukacinsky make their lyrical points with passionate gusto, and completing each other’s arguments like you’d expect from two men who have been making music in this setting for the past 14 years. �I finally think that The Suicide Machines are comfortable in their own skin,� notes Navarro. “Who knows; the band could break up tomorrow, but I can definitely say that at this point, we’re very comfortable with who we are and what we do.� Lukacinsky concurs, noting that “I really like where we’re at right now. I like being in a position where we can keep shit edgy and really say something. I really have a sense of accomplishment that we’ve been able to take our music all over the world and play it for people pretty much everywhere.� The Suicide Machines are one of punk rock’s great stories of endurance and credibility. Starting the group in 1991, Navarro, Lukacinsky and various cohorts worked the Detroit punk underground for two years before recording their first demo, subsequently issuing singles, split singles and EPs before signing a major-label deal in 1995. The four albums that followed were the proverbial Real Deal, musically uncompromising but not tied to any dogmatic parameters. The Suicide Machines saw fit to experiment with everything from melodic ideas to instrument tones and song structures and lengths. Not cookie-cutter punk rock, in other words. With 2003’s A Match and Some Gasoline, The Suicide Machines found a new label home, with SideOneDummy Records, as well as a new production situation, working with Bill Stevenson at his Blasting Room studio in Fort Collins, Colo.—a relationship that continues on War Profiteering... �Working with him and with Jason (Livemore, Blasting Room’s engineer) and with SideOneDummy, I get this feeling that everybody is on the same page now,� Lukacinsky says. “Everybody knows what’s going on. It makes for a more effective record, I think.� Lukacinsky and Navarro will be the first to acknowledge that it took some time for The Suicide Machines to hone in on what they wanted to do with War Profiteering..., however. The group started working on songs in the late summer of 2004. “We wrote a bunch of songs we weren’t content with,� Navarro recalls. “It just lacked the right intensity, as far as we were concerned.� The sessions did yield some material, but the singer feels that when the group locked in on the track “Capsule (AKA—Requiem for the Stupid Human Race)� things really started to kick into high gear. Lukacinsky, meanwhile, says it was the album’s title track that helped turn the corner. “After I wrote that, then it was like ‘I know what I want to do now.’ Boom! After that we were able to write a bunch of songs for this record.� They acknowledge now that they may have started too soon, that the results of the 2004 Presidential election provided a different kind of inspiration for songwriting, whether as direct as “17% 18 to 25�—about the poor turnout of younger voters—or in more general state-of-the-society examinations such as “Capitalist Suicide,� “The Red Flag,� “Bottomed Out� and “Hands Tied.� �This kind of shit fires me up,� says Navarro. “Some people aren’t going to like it, but at least we’re saying something.� In fact, he adds, The Suicide Machines were particularly motivated by what they felt was “complacency� in the wake of the elections. �That’s kind of what a lot of this record is about,� Navarro explains. “All the punks bands are like, ‘Oh, whatever. Politics? Eh. Lame. Over it.’ We’re like, ‘Played out and over it? Are you kidding me?! It’s an everyday struggle. It’s not something that’s in or out, and all these bands are just kind of taking it that way.� Lukacinsky agrees that “the anger increased after the election, for sure,� and doesn’t feel it’s out of character for The Suicide Machines to vent like they do on War Profiteering... “We’ve always talked about politics,� he notes. “Before it was more talking about issues of unity and this and that. Now there are other things to sing about. We know that when you come at people with an extreme message some of them aren’t gonna dig it, but...� �It’s punk rock, right? If we’re not pissing somebody off, we’re not doing our job.� But don’t lose sight of the fact that it’s the playing that really fires War Profiteering... “We went for a more bombastic sound and got it,� Lukacinsky says, and it’s also a incredibly diverse attack, with plenty of straightforward, blast-furnace rockers (the title track, “17% 18 to 25,� “Revolution is on the Clearance Rack,� “Capsule,� “All Systems Fail�) but also—and importantly—songs that shift into reggae and ska flavors on tracks such as “Ghosts on Sunset Boulevard,� “Nuclear Generator� and “Capitalist Suicide,� the latter of which Lukacinsky considers “quintessential Suicide Machines.� Ultimately, War Profiteering... is in itself quintessential Suicide Machines, giving the listener plenty of portals into the music and 14 convincing reasons to listen. �However somebody’s getting into the band, that’s cool,� says Lukacinsky. “We’re not going to say that the only reason you should be into The Suicide Machines is because of what we’re talking about or the kind of music we play. I think we offer a lot, and whatever catches someone is great.�

www.suicide-machines.com