Chris Colohan (Cursed, SECT, Left For Dead) and Morgan Carpenter (Hive, Sawblade, Prison Shank) have joined forces as Oxygen Tank, a new hardcore project that is as brutal as one would expect from the pair of musicians.
"Oxygen Tank was really Morgan’s baby," Chris told No Echo via email. "The last shows I played in the US just as everything was grinding to a halt last March was a really fun weekend with SECT and Hive. Not long afterwards, Morgan hit me up about collaborating on this. I loved the songs, totally straight-up nasty hardcore a la the late '90s/Y2K era.
"I was around bands like 9 Shocks or Tear It Up at the time moreso than the Boston scene but it was a really interesting wave and I fucking loved bands like No Justice with one foot in each end who epitomized the legit recklessness of that moment that we consensually subjected ourselves to and barely got away with. I don’t really have the range to 'do' anything but open my mouth and scream however I do, but I tried to do it with that vibe in mind."
Now that you've gotten some background on the project, let's check out Oxygen Tank's new (ripping) demo:
Chris offered the following thoughts about the songs on the Oxygen Tank demo:
"'Darkness Come to Light' is about a very old and close friend being outed for sexual assault and the many messy, conflicting feelings that come with cutting someone loose with the near and dear parts inseparable from the untenable ones. But on the flip side its also about the blind spots and false securities in the way we as a community deal with something so personal but through such a flawed and impersonal medium.
"We tend to run people out of town on a rail, or just out of sight and out of mind and leave it at that, without thinking much about the unsuspecting ecosystem they land in, or how few favors we’re doing to the people in it. On one hand there’s zero nuance to the assault/accountability part of it. On the other, there’s a mountain of nuance to it that we need to brave as people and not screen names, and sort out how to wade into before we should ever let ourselves think we made our world truly any safer for survivors or potential targets."
"Then, 'As Farce' is about a lifetime of watching in slow motion as we passed one point of no return after another, pathologically sheltered by privilege, polarization and distraction, and then being blindsided by the repercussions (ecological and political especially) finally landing on our real time reality. And even then, diving further into delusion and tribalism rather than owning our mess. We’re so well polarized and manipulated that we’re unable to walk anything back even where we clearly fucked it up - which tells you all you need to know about where it goes from here."
"'Doomwatch' is about the COVID year, all of us being stuck alone with ourselves and glued to the endless stream of bad news, and the business model that dread and surveillance became (which also tells you where it goes from here)."
"'Police Story 2021': Ok, so this is kind of funny. When I first heard the songs, it immediately hit me that the last one sounded a lot like [Black Flag's] 'Police Story,' which either Morgan hadn’t mentioned or I blanked on (I mean, it’s been a year). Over lockdown I started to write/play complete music for the first time and I’m definitely getting a taste of that paranoia that something you think you wrote could be from a song already floating around in fragments in your head to begin with.
"It felt awkward and too late to say 'dude, this is way too close to 'Police Story'' to Morgan so I took it as a challenge to try and throw it as far off that path as I could—and then a fucking 1/2 hour before leaving the house to record it, realized it just was 'Police Story'—straight up, on purpose (see this is what band meetings are for)—so I just rewrote 'Police Story' for the reality of the George Floyd-era before I could overthink it.
"The state of authoritarian overreach now is a little more far-gone now than some Hermosa Beach cops telling Black Flag they can’t skateboard in this parking lot. Repurposed though, I think it’s the feelgood Fuck You hardcore cover that modern life needed. Mine, anyway."
The Oxygen Tank demo is streaming everywhere now, and Anthems for the Undesirable will be releasing a 7 inch in 2022.
***
Help Support What No Echo Does via Patreon:
***
Tagged: cursed, hive, left for dead, oxygen tank, sawblade, sect
