Late last month, Mercy Ties broke their decade-long hiberation by releasing Reflections and Criticisms, their third studio album. Brewing a potent sonic cocktail of noisy hardcore, screamo, and noise rock, the Pacific Northwestern-bred quartet haven't lost a step despite their hiatus.
For the Reflections and Criticisms recording tracking, Mercy Ties worked with Scott Evans (Kowloon Walled City, Sumac) and Chris Common (These Arms Are Snakes, The Mars Volta) who engineered and mixed the sessions.
When I was sent the new record, I was told that Mercy Ties guitarist Trevor Bebee has also trained and competed as a powerlifter. In this following Q&A, I chat with him about the new record, his take on the current music scene, and the connections between hardcore and the powerlifting world.
How closely did you follow the hardcore/heavy music scene during your time away from Mercy Ties? I read that your recording technique at home helped spark your creativity but did any of the newer bands out there also help inspire that?
I've always followed new stuff. I still went to a lot of hardcore shows and have so many friends who still play in bands. I like a lot of newer bands, but I don't think they are as much of an inspiration or motivation for writing as older bands.
I get super-pumped when I see people who are in their 40s and 50s who still write badass records and go all-in, wrecking themselves playing shows. Pettibone and Heiress, the Great Falls dudes, the Yellfire dudes, all the homies still doin' it is so rad to see. Seeing young kids come out to shows is super-endearing to me and really makes me emotional and reflective of everything punk and hardcore have given me since I was a little kid, but it's not as inspirational as old people still doing it [laughs].
It's easy to be in a band in your 20s. When you're older and have a family and bills and not enough time for anything, you really have to love this to make it happen. So many people just end up getting into middle age and working to die without any passion left in their life. I'm very grateful to be able to do this with my friends.
Did all of those years training in powerlifting have any impact on your playing style from a physical standpoint? Are there any lasting effects from that training, good or bad?
I think playing shows at my biggest would have been miserable. At my heaviest I weighed around 290lbs, and I'm around 190 right now, so I feel way more comfortable. Yeah, that's right, I lost 100lbs and a lot of it was muscle. Even on that European tour I weighed around 230/240 and didn't feel nearly as comfortable as now. I feel like I will be able to run around while playing a lot easier now.
I endured a lot of injuries in the 8 years of competing, but nothing really affects my playing. I mean, sitting in a chair writing tunes is all good when you're huge, but running and jumping around would have been so hard. That's the biggest reason I didn't want to play shows. I was extremely focused on being one of the strongest dudes in Washington and giving up playing shows for a while was a sacrifice I had to take. Now I feel like a ballerina.
How much of a hardcore music community did you find in that world?
The crossover with the hardcore community in powerlifting is pretty big, especially with females, I feel like. The amount of female competitive powerlifters I ran into who came from hardcore or are super into hardcore was pretty insane actually. So many hella strong women covered in tattoos with punk/hardcore shirts on is kinda burned into my memory. Super rad.
How did the distance between the members inform the material, if at all? Were you concerned about that once you decided to bring the band back?
The process of us being apart, me writing and sending tunes to Chris on my laptop, marinating on it, then us all flying out and recording was way better, I feel like. Chris, Mike and I jammed it all out a few weeks before going into the studio. It was hard on Andre to have to go in cold and figure a lot of it out on the fly. But I think what we ended up with, especially with the vocals, is really genuine and authentic to us.
I'm really happy with how the record turned out. Really sounds like us, and that's all I care about. The engineering really captured how we would sound live too. It's gonna be super fun to play. We've all been rehearsing a lot separately. We're just gonna fly out and run it a few times and make it happen.
Tell me about hooking up with The Ghost Is Clear. The label’s roster has been growing and has carved out quite a unique roster so far.
Brian was in a band called Tigon with our drummer Chris, and we've always been homies long distance with Bobby. I love what he represents in the label world. He just genuinely wants to press cool records. He's always been a big supporter of us. I sent him the unmastered record and he was down, we just had to time it with the 6,000 other records he was putting out. They have put out so much cool shit, it's rad.
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Reflections and Criticisms is out now via The Ghost Is Clear Records.
Mercy Ties x Throes tour dates:
April 18 - Boise, ID @ Realms
April 19 - San Francisco, CA @ Neck of the Woods
April 20 - Fresno, CA @ Destructive Warehouse
April 21 - Los Angeles, CA @ Genghis Cohen
April 22 - Bakersfield, CA @ 415 BKFD
April 23 - Sacramento, CA @ Cafe Colonial
April 24 - Eugene, OR @ Wandering Goat
April 25 - Portland, OR @ Commonwealth
April 26 - Seattle, WA @ The Black Lodge
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