Reagan SS - interview with thrash punk band Reagan SS

Thrasher Magazine, August, 2002

BACK A COUPLE YEARS, SEVERE EARTHQUAKES HIT

Los Angeles. One elevated freeway heading to Santa Monica was obliterated for over 300 yards. This huge chunk just dropped 50 feet to the ground. In an effort to stop LA's tenacious motorists from flying off the freeway in droves, all traffic was diverted. In addition to all the signs, seven different layers of barricades were set up, each one progressively designed to stop a hurtling vehicle. Two months after the quakes, a woman effectively launched her car right off the end of the freeway. She lived. In perfect Californian style, she sued the freeway system. It was revealed she was doing her nails at the time of the accident.

Reagan SS are an LA band. You could call them thrash. They play loud and fast enough to earthquake a freeway down. As a matter of fact, they are unexpectedly good and have seemed to come from nowhere. It's almost as if you were sitting in a lawn chair watching that lady careen off the freeway. Kinda scary. Real fun. Lots of noise. -- Retodd

Where did the name Reagan SS come from?

Matt: I like historically significant names or names you can look up in an encyclopedia and reference.

Someone like Dorothy Hamill?

Matt: Or Mark Spitz, or the Kennedys. With the Dead Kennedys there's a historical significance to the word "Kennedys." But I also want something that'll piss people off. The SS thing: this gny, Nate Wilson (ex-Devoid of Faith, Monster X), we hung out one time working together in Daytona Beach for Spring Break handing out promo items for his website. Nate kept saying he wanted to start a new band and everything was "We should start a band called Blaster SS or blah, blab, blab SS." Everything was SS.

To clarify, we're talking the specially trained World War II German SS (one branch was called the "Death's Head Organization") and not the Chevy Nova SS? Right?

Matt: Yeah.

I didn't know if you were specifically anti-Ford and pro-Chevy. Are there any other SS bands?

Matt: Dearborn SS, Crude SS, SS Decontrol, Hitler SS, Genocide SS, and I hear there is a band called Jesus SS.

Have any of your families been opposed to the SS? Do they find it offensive or do they get the joke of it? Because Hitler probably would have wanted to kill all you guys.

Danny: I don't think my dad knows, but he's like, "What the fuck are you doing, playing in a band?"

John: My grandma, I always tell her the names of the bands I've been in, and she's like, "OK" And I told her about this one. She raised an eyebrow and thought, "You fuckin' idiot," She didn't say that, but the eye roll said volumes.

Apeface: My family doesn't care.

Matt: My family knows nothing about this. When I started doing fan 'zines in junior high they flipped out. I was hiding all of my punk records and 'zines in really weird places in the closet because my mom would flip out. Even to this day, I don't tell her that I do a mail order and a fan 'zine or that I see punk shows. I used to buy Thrasher when it first started coming out and she was even upset with that because there'd be a punk picture somewhere in there.

Hardcore, as a genre, is extremely difficult to be progressive in. What steps are you taking as a band to not be a throwback? Your name suggests a slight revisitation to the '80s, to Anti-Reagan rock.

John: I think we're trying to do more than just play four chords and sing about the government and how my mom doesn't want to pay for my college and whining about shit you don't have any control of. It starts from within.

Matt: You can't keep on putting the same record out over and over, otherwise people will just get tired of it. "Oh, do they really need to do a fifth record when it's the same record as the first?" The stuff that we're doing now, that's not even recorded yet, that we're just working on in the practice studio, is more noisy. It's experimental but not like an avant garde musician with, "OK, here's this space then two seconds of blast."

John: There's no eight-minute guitar solos or anything. Most of the songs are under a minute--more the effect of sound instead of blastbeats.

Danny: Or just your typical breakdowns.

Matt: I don't want to put out records or do music anymore where I just listen to it. I want you to react. "Oh, fuck, my ears. Ahhh, that is unpleasant." We're planning on doing certain things with low frequencies that will cause the listener to react in ways they don't want to react that will make them uncomfortable. It will be a physical reaction. That's our concept EP.

Matt: I used to feel the blood rush through my head... Actually, at almost every practice I almost faint. It feels like I'm either going to throw up or I'm going to faint. When did the dots stop? I'd like to say the DS 13 show, which was in September. We started playing our first shows in May. Five months. Long time.

Matt, when you started singing for this band, how long did it take before you no longer had dots in your vision from screaming so much? Because, when you sing, your eyes look like hard-boiled eggs popping out of your skull.