All Torn Up! ***New Interview***

All Torn Up! is yet another awesome punk band coming out of New York. They are actually pretty amazing to see live and have shared the stage with some great punk bands. They also have a great demo out that you can download for free. I going Joey to tell their story...

Introduce yourself...
Hey, I am Joey Steel. I'm the lead vocalist for All Torn Up! (ATU) We are a NYC hardcore band.

How did the band start?
Soren (drums), Cello (guitars) and I met in 2007. We jammed with a bassist and did not call ourselves All Torn Up! We really had no ambitions to do much more than making some original garage based hardcore and having fun.
When we started we were just really experimenting with different sounds, while trying to stay true to our love of gritty, violent hardcore. Our bassist left, and we met Bryan. We jammed and everything we had been trying really came together.
We spent some time trying to get our sound to be something special, but rooted in the music we loved. We argued a lot and became All Torn Up! We each brought something special and stepped it up as we spun it together.
About 6 months ago All Torn Up! took our next step in our evolution. We decided we need to make some changes in what we were doing and got a new bass player, Philippe and a 2nd guitarist Brian.
All Torn Up! has grown in a a lot of ways over the years, and we have surprised ourselves with what we have done. Now with a new line up we are surprising ourselves again, and hopefully we will surprise you all too, soon enough.
We have and will always be about trying to have meaning and content in everything we do. We want to help make this world a better place. We see injustice in every motion in everyone, and we see how incredible we are capable of being with each other, and we just want to get in everyone's faces, bring conscious political punk out to people, and encourage the scene and all underground shit to ACTUALLY represent something this fucked up capitalist society, and this racist, misogynistic, homophobic fucking country could ever represent. It has been these ideas that have kept us working hard, when all else seemed to be going wrong, and it is our love for each other and our ideas that keeps us together.

How did you come up with the name?
Wow, well this was not fucking easy. At every step in ATU we have tried to be true to our different ideas and the ideas we share in common by bringing our separate talents and passions together but also  really trying to operate as a serious collective respecting each others' differences. But sometimes this means not agreeing on shit, for a long fucking time.
Finally I was sitting outside my work one day, thinking about how pissed I was that we could not all agree on anything including out band name, and I thought of how this was not just a weakness. I thought it came from how passionate we are about everything.  But, it was infuriating that we could not get along. I thought it was also awesome that we call cared about each other enough that we were staying in this together despite our constant disagreements. I loved the tension that we have together. It makes me a better person because it challenges me and makes me remember why my mates are special. We are all headed in different directions, but we are all together. The band is a little microcosm of the world, we are all torn up!
It has always been about something more than us, and trying to make the scene, ourselves, each other and the world a better place, by being honest about what we think and engaging in dialogue about our differences through our music. Differences are seen as a weakness, but really they are incredible. Sure we are all torn up, but we should keep trying to pull it all together, and move ahead! TOGETHER!

Who would you say are your influences?
We all like different shit, but we love to play old 80s hardcore. Music like Black Flag or even Agent Orange is really a common bond. Passionate, irreverent, mean shit. But a few bands that have come up in practices before, Agnostic Front, Misfits, Helmet, Hot Water Music, Sperm Brids, Rise Against, Orio, and obviously Witch Hunt, who has a song titled, All Torn Up. That is just a few off the top of my head. We pride ourselves in being all over the fucking place on what we listen to on any given day. But it is music like the WEIRDOS or Minor Threat that pumps my blood.

What is the punk scene like in New York?
We are lucky to be in a scene so many great bands, and more than anything so many people who are interested and excited to come out and hear new music.
I think that sometimes people in the scene get a bit stuck in a rut. Sometimes we can forget to have fun again, and we get a little too cool for school. But even bands that hate on me, personally, or whatever, I often enjoy the music they make, and no one is stabbing each other, yet, so it is all in good spirits. I think we have some incredible bands, some even more incredible fans, and some great venues.
Sure some shit sucks, but every scene has good and bad parts, we have a lo of great shit. The city and the scene is so big that really, there is room for everyone to just kind of do there own thing, mostly. Really we have a number of scenes in the city.
All Torn Up! really loves to play with out politically conscious sisters and brothers. We play with a lot of other political HC bands, and would like to play with more. But there are some great conscious caring bands with incredible fucking sounds out here and in the surrounding area, Death First, Bible Thumper, Praxis, Anti-Armada, Born in a Cent, and venues like 538 Johnson's Stolen Sleeves.
We also LOVE to play for Latino punk crowds. I think that scene here in NYC is the best, and has some of my favorite bands and people around. They let loose and enjoy life, while giving a shit about what they do and think about the world. I LOVE IT. Bands like (A) Truth, Skarroneos, Deskilibrio Social, Necrophilia, Teen Wolves, Cojoba, Huasipungo, and places like the Lake, which is like a 2nd home to us.

Describe the song writing process...
Basically usually Cello or Philippe brings in a riff and we kind of play around with that for a while, and sometimes it flows into something else, sometimes they come up with a matching part. Sometimes we just sort of sit around and talk about ideas and try to work out from there. There is a lot of studio time where we just jam, and a lot of time outside, just hanging out together, where we just kind of mill over ideas. It has been important for us to go with ideas a little bit, even when they are weird, and let them get worked out, before we turn them down. Being creative like this is not easy over a long period of time, so we just try to make it fun, and keep the stress out, and let the emotions and ideas that drive us to want and make a better world take us to new places.
I really believe that when we focus on what we believe in and sharing that with people, or confronting people with that, we will make something unique and honest, that will be passionate and powerful. That is not easy, but luckily my band mates come up with some incredible riffs. Really it is mostly them.

What have you released?
We did a Demo CD back in 2008 with a bunch of songs. We went on and did a song for a German football club, called St. Pauli (My drummer is from Hamburg, Germany, and a HUGE St. Pauli supporter. They have an incredible left wing and antifascist club over there.) in 2009. We pressed a split 7” in 2010 with our dear friends, (A)Truth which we still have a few copies of, if people are interested. And finally, when we parted ways with our old bassist, we released a short internet album called, “To An End...” of some tracks that were supposed to get distributed, but the timing never lined up.
You can get almost all of our recordings on our bandcamp website for free, http://alltornup.bandcamp.com/.

Who are some of the bands you have done shows with?
I mentioned some above, that we enjoy and have played quite a bit with, but here are a few more memorable ones from NYC and elsewhere that we have enjoyed playing with, some of them have sadly since broken up, but I bet you can find recordings of there out there: Urban Waste, Thulsa Doom, Black Out Shoppers, Rabbi Darkside (great nyc hip hop artist), The Blame, Miscegenators, Asymmetric Warfare (Seattle), Assassinators (Denmark), Blood Bombers (Philly), No Tomorrow (NC), Sangharsha (nepal/nyc), and of course it was a pleasure playing with Jerry Only's and Dez's Misfits! But honestly for me, the best band we played with, and that is saying a lot, because this list has INCREDIBLE fucking bands on it, but the best band we played with was a three piece from Oklahoma, called Bring Down the Hammer. Fucking incredible!

Have you toured?
Nope, some day, hopefully. We are back after taking a break for a while, and ready to play new shows with mostly new songs.

Do you prefer small clubs or large venues?
Hmm, well I think the sound you get at some of these big places is incredible, and I like that, but we love DIY, and we love smaller venues that allow us to really be with the crowd. Some small venues really have awful sound, but we work through that. It is all about the experience. Small places or big ones, we will take that crowd some place they have not been in a long time, or we will kill ourselves trying to take them there.

Is there a favorite band you like to do shows with?
We have played a lot of shows with (A)Truth, they are good friends of ours. I love those folks. We also have played a lot of shows with Nekrophilia, who are also good buddies. We have played with Black Out Shoppers a few times, and we fucking love their music and attitude, so that always fits real well with how we want a show to go. But honestly, we love playing with and meeting new people so, it is hard to say completely.

Is there a favorite place you like to do shows at?
Yes, the Lake (run by East Rev. productions) and ABC NO RIO.

What do you see is the future of All Torn Up?
All Torn Up! will keep making mean, in your face music to change the world to. All of us in the band have other bands we play with, Star Witness, The Will, JS and The Attitude Adjusters, Beyond the Grave, and other causes and issues we care deeply about, supporting F.C. St.Pauli, fighting police brutality, communism, Occupy Wallstreet, producing other music, and even just spending time with loved ones, but this band, these ideas, what passion and energy we can evoke through this music means a fucking LOT to us, and we work hard to keep it relevant and volatile.
To us the future is all about bringing to light the shit that gets blotted out by this horrible system. We want to keep making hard fucking music, that gives expression to what we really feel, anger for the lives we have been offered and passion to tear this world apart and build a new one based on justice for all people, no matter how or where they were born.
We want to just make sweet tunes that help us all be more conscious and help others see different ideas that they can take into their lives and live by, or just use to rethink how they live in general.
We will be making new music, and hopefully putting out some more albums for people. Where ever there is injustice and oppression there must be people resisting and raising our sights to deal with it, and get through it. We want to accept our responsibility to do this, in a way that also lets people have fun and let go of this horrible system. WE enjoy the underground scene, and that there are people who want to drop out of this main stream society, so we will be down here, trying to promote and live lives in ways that we actually believe in, and helping other quit the awful society we have been offered and start to build another. We believe this is an elemental part, making music, so we will be down here, until we can't any longer.
All Power to the People!

How can people contact the band?
They can e-mail us at atunyc@gmail.com or they can friend us on facebook, just look up “All Torn Up!”. They can get much of our older music on http://alltornup.bandcamp.com/. Feel free to bootleg it, spread it, whatever. It's not about the money, it is about the music, the energy, and the message!
Feel free to contact us about shows or whatever.