You can’t teach an old dog new tricks or so the saying goes. Almost being forty years into their career Discharge have become synonymous with the anarchic nature of Punk. Known for their abrasive sound, creating sandpaper style guitars asphalt laden vocals spitting out songs in their now coined D-Beat style you would be excused if after as many years as 1982’s eponymous Hear Nothing,See Nothing,Say Nothing the band had run out of steam. Yet now the band are on the cusp of their brand new album End of Days seeing them begin yet another bandfaced chapter in their history. Shortly before performing in Tottenham’s legendary T-Chances venue we were able to sit down with singer Jeff JJ Janiak and an impromptu appearance from none other than Tez himself. Delving into how the band encountered troubles with material, making a record in the day and age of 2016 and some unexpected Doctor Who fans.
Check out the full interview below as an unedited soundbyte or read underneath for a full transcript!
Today we have JJ from Discharge with us, how are you?
JJ : I’m very cold, freezing my ass off!
Typical British weather! Whats the year been like for Discharge thus far?
Its been pretty fuckin’ busy really! Finished the album end of last year and its all being put into motion now. We did the hard bit with actually recording the album, mixing and all that, its finally done so now is the time to get it out there. There seems to be a lot of interest in it which is a good thing, just been busy with promotion and all of that.
Cool! So what was the recording process like?
The recording process, it was just a lot of rehearsals wasn’t it? We would have the odd rehearsal maybe once a week, trying to come up with a song or two. We would maybe come up with a song a week, if that, every few weeks. It was probably over a period of about, what Tez, six months or something? Just coming up with new songs and once it actually came together we just basically tried to record it on a little shit tape recorder kind of thing just so that we wouldn’t forget it. At that point we just wanted to make an album.
Tez : But it was difficult.
JJ: Yeah, yeah!
Tez : Because we started changing it! Things had started to get changed. We threw down, how many, eighteen nineteen tunes down.
JJ : It was just a matter of which ones we were keepin’
Tez : Then there was a gap, a break and we had to go back to it for revision. Unfortunately we started changing bits of things but then we started going out and then coming back in with different ideas. Then we had to decipher which was the better of the two, so we threw a lot of tunes out! Because they weren’t working with that gap.
So it wasn’t a back to drawing board completely…
Tez : We just couldn’t rememeber what we played the first time most of the time! We would keep a chorus out of a tune and then change the verse and then the middle eights. On old recordings we didn’t bother with but now we have upped our game to changing the tunes so that they are a lot more presentable now bit more of a challenge, to the players!
JJ : Half the lyrics were written just before going in, minutes going in recording.
Tez : But you had ideas that changed pretty much like the tunes! You know what I mean! Everything was changing as we were recording everything was changing.
JJ : Normally I would come up with something in my head, come up with a chorus so I just kind of wrote the lyrics based on what I had with the chorus but when I first were writing the songs it was all I had, the chorus in rehearsals. I was singing but I wasn’t really singing, I was just kind of grumbling things.
Tez : What we were striving against, was it sounding or becoming too much like anything else. So that was the problem we would have something and then we would go back to it and say “nah”.
JJ : It sounds too much like this or that
Tez : Or it sounds too melodic! Thats what we strive against, the melodies. We’re a band that for want of a different word we strive to destroy the blues scale and music. You’ve got your blues scale which everyone goes by and we tend to struggle against it which is our music!
How did you come up with the album title End of Days?
JJ : The day we went into the studio it was a Blood moon.
Tez : Yeah, it was Bones who came up with the title!
JJ : We just kept hearing End of Days, it was all over the radio about this Blood Moon and there were all of these religious groups saying, its the end of days! Its the end of the world, this is it. It just stuck.
Do you record live or is it individually tracked?
JJ : Yeah, its individually tracked but its got a live sound to it and we did it all analogue. On the old big real tapes, we didn’t do it digital because we don’t like digital. Old style, big reels which is why we decided to go to the recording studio that we did because he has analogue and not a lot of people do.
Tez : Its literally like listening to a record or a CD, theres a certain something that is missing which is the analogue.
The rough and ready.
Tez : Yeah, yeah! With digital you miss all the grit and all the grind that you want. Fortunately thats why we mixed down digital because no one wants to deal with all the splitting tape how they used to and joining the tape together… I remember going into the studio and it was just like that! There was no pushing buttons, they had to do it all by hand. Which had a certain sound to itself and now people are trying to reproduce that sound but now obviously technology is pushing it out of the way.
Were you involved in the production side of things?
Tez : Somewhat, we had a go at it.
JJ : We did originally, the only problem we had was with the bass. The bass just sounded off, I mean we did produce it ourselves whilst we were in the studio and whatnot the main thing was just getting the bass sorted. It was eventually sent off to Sweden, a guy called Peter Tagtren who is pretty well know guy!
Hypocrisy I think?
JJ : Yeah, Hypocrisy and he’s in another band with the guys from Rammstein or something but he is a big Discharge fan and he is familiar with the band so he knows the sound we were after. In the end he did the final mixing and its exactly what we wanted.
You guys have released the single “Hatebomb”, what made you decide to release that as the first single?
Tez : That was actually Marcus wasn’t it! That was his favourite track, he wanted that. We were pretty indecisive.
JJ : We liked all the tracks. We couldn’t decide.
Tez : Thats why we couldn’t really get it together so we let someone, an outsider deal with the mix. We were liking it a bit too much for want of something better, we were messing it up so we let someone else take it.
What about the artwork, how did you decide on the artwork for End of Days?
JJ : Basically that was just End of Days, I mean the most typical thing you’re going to think of when you hear that is a nuclear explosion or something. Which is probably so typical of Discharge and everyone would expect of Discharge. We were thinking of doing something different than that. End of Days, I just thought of a crying angel. Found this picture of a crying angel it was a great photo and we ended finding out it was from fuckin’ Doctor Who!
Tez : I don’t think any of us knew! I haven’t watched Doctor Who since the fuckin’ eighties!
JJ : I’ve never watched Doctor Who, I didn’t even know! After the released the artwork people were saying, isn’t that from Doctor Who? Really??
You can rebrand it! Now its from Discharge!
JJ : Hahaha
Tez : Put a dalek on it!Its your first album since 2002 if thats right? Thereabouts?
JJ : Its 2008 I think, Desensitized? 2002 was the last album with Cal singing. You were on that album (motions to Tez).
Tez : I was the drummer but now I’m guitar.
JJ : I think it was around 2008 and that was with Rat singing.
Was there any new techniques that you wanted to bring into it or did you want to stay with the classic Discharge sound?
JJ : That was the main thing. We just wanted to keep it simple, keep it as simple as possible and just do a fuckin’ Discharge record. Nevermind progression and trying to be better musicians and whatnot.
Tez : Musicians don’t go out and buy fuckin’ records and they don’t come out and watch a band. I’m a musician myself so I know how it works, you don’t even go to gigs unless you get in for free!
JJ : Less is more sometimes you know and thats exactly what we went for on this.
You’ve got a really abrasive sound, do you think that gave birth to Grindcore, that era?
JJ : So they say!
Tez : There was nothing like that when we started. Nothing whatsoever. We started, I mean I was the drummer I came up with the D- Beat. I wasn’t even a drummer, that was just the only thing I could play really! I was the singer before that and then I thought well lets see how this goes and then it just poured in and poured out. Nothing was planned it was just the way it was and back in those days you could do that.
Do you feel that technology has limited that now?
Tez : Of course but how can you stand in the way of that!
What about influences for the both of you, who would you say is a fairly strong influence?
Tez : Its difficult to say, me and my brother Bones we tend to strive to not listen to too much. I love music, I love listening to it but I tend not to be drawn into a certain style of someone elses because I’ve got my own style and pretty much so does he! Of course he does, he’s Bones the guitarist. Me and him, I don’t know what it is but me and him just play the same. Its a certain kind of swing, that D Beat has incorporated into our sound and striving against the blues scale once again, thats the Discharge sound.
Why is it that you want to strive against the blues scale?
Tez : Bones has never really sat down and deciphered it but I have I have thought about it many a times. I’ve played in many a band! I’ve played the Blues scale so therefore I know the difference so I’ll come up with a tune and sometimes maybe intentionally it’ll have that blues scale thing in it and I’ll play it to him and he’ll be like “Nah..” Vice versa! He will play something to me, which will be his style but it will be somewhat a little too much blues scale incorporated. Are you a musician?
I play guitar.
Tez : Then again you should know! The “A” the “D” the “E” then back to the back to the “D”. We strive against that, throw those chords in without the dots!
