Interview: Glass Splinter

Glass Splinter (fka Laura Dern) is an emerging hardcore punk band from Southern California. With two EPs under its belt, the five-piece unleashed After the Future, its first full-length album, earlier this year. Good Album Friday sat down with the band to chat about the album.

After the Future sounds like you’re walking through the circusy corridors of hell and descending into a wild party. It’s very chaotic. I didn’t read the lyrics yet, but the album doesn’t sound very optimistic.

Randall: Yeah, I don’t remember what all the lyrics were, but that was definitely the vibe I had when I was thinking of riffs.

Lucas: It’s funny you say that because I feel like the album is a reflection of the craziness that this world has brought upon everyone. I feel like it’s a mix of despair, but also a little bit of hope because you can kind of hear that in some of the songs too. In “After the Future,” the beginning is super crazy and loud and noisy. And then there’s this transition into this really different song, with more melodies and it’s not as chaotic. So it’s a balance between those two moods.

Ian: A big theme of it was expressing a negative viewpoint towards the human race in general.

Does “Anthropocene” refer to the era of human fuckery?

Randall: Yeah, basically. In terms of how scientists measure geological time, it’s the era of the planet where the number one contributing factor to the environment is humans and industrialized society. So there’s an argument out there that the past century and a half is kind of the beginning of that. I got that from a book called Learning to Die in the Anthropocene by Roy Scranton. For me, that was very informative in terms of the lyrics and aesthetic outlook of the album.

“Self-Inflicted Ego Boost” incorporates a sample from comedian Bill Hicks: “When did mediocrity and banality become a good image for your children? I want my children listening to people who fucking rocked!” Tell me about this sample choice.

Adrian: I’m a big Bill Hicks fan. That particular sample is from one of my favorite bits that he does in his stand up. It’s just a discussion during his time, but it’s applicable I think to every generation. There’s people that see, I guess, outsider music as damaging for children, as opposed to what’s mainstream. Despite the mainstream projecting ideals that are probably not the best. And the ending of that is him thinking he’d rather suffer damnation for rockin’ out as opposed to just vibing to something that is a good tune. I always thought that’d be a good song. And that song in particular, I felt was the perfect one to emulate that.

Tell me about the artwork.

Lucas: It was just a little collage that I made previously. It was really gonna be a shirt design, but then I thought it would be good for the album. We probably still will put it on a shirt. I went through this phase where I was taking old books from the library, buying old books, cutting out all the pictures and stuff, and then scanning them onto my computer to make collages. And yeah, I just found that in one of those old ’70s books that teaches you about different things in life.

Randall: One of the things that grabbed my attention was how simple the design was. Also, biblical illustrations are always interesting to look at because if you don’t know what you’re looking at, it looks like fantasy shit, or post apocalyptic. It looks weird out of the context of the Bible. I think that resonated with something in the album that I thought fit.

What’s your writing process like?

Ian: Very organic and quick, in a way. We rarely reject ideas. Pretty much everything turns into a song.

Adrian: I always like to think of it as like a collaborative show and tell.

Randall: A lot of us as songwriters are very different. I noticed Lucas is always coming up with the conceptual idea of a song. And it’s very abstract in a way that leaves a lot of room for interpretation. I kind of just say, ‘I wrote the sick ass riff, let’s just jam it.’ Then we’ll see what else we can do. Ian will come to us and say, ‘We gotta do a crust song, we gotta have this kind of riff.’ And we’ll workshop something like that.

Lucas: That’s what makes the band work. There’s so many different influences. Like Ian with his saxophone, and Randall and Adrian with their riffs. Andrew’s into more of the hardcore stuff. With me, I’m into more electronic stuff. It’s kind of this weird combination of things.

Adrian: Each of us as musicians is very different in the sense that we all have our own style when it comes to songwriting. And because we all listen to so much stuff, other than contributing what we know, I feel like we’ll adapt each other’s style and incorporate it into ourselves. It makes us write different songs. For a lot of the songs on this record, I tried to go into a more fast paced, power violence kind of guitar playing, as opposed to melodic screamo that I’m usually writing. And I think that’s what keeps the gears turning when we’re together. We’re never stuck in a hole of playing the same thing over and over again. Oftentimes, I get the most fun out of writing as opposed to playing shows because when we’re writing, each of us waits for what we’re about to throw at it with enthusiasm as opposed to criticism. So I think that’s a big thing that makes this band work personally.

Listen to After the Future here. Follow Glass Splinter here.