HATEBREED
by Christine Natanael
“Whatever problems I was facing in my life, I felt like music was an outlet,” confesses Jamey Jasta, vocalist for Connecticut’s foremost metalcore band Hatebreed. “It was always on, whether it was just listening in a walkman on my way to school on the bus or actually going to a show and seeing it live and stagediving and going in the pit and stuff like that.
So I always knew that
I wanted to do something with my life that was always going to give back,
rather than not.” On the tour bus
somewhere between New York City and the next gig, Jasta is on his cell
phone giving me the intimate details on this adventure
into the world of music. With his first musical memories being
his mother’s admiration for the Pointer Sisters and Michael
Jackson, it really wasn’t
very long before he was saving his allowance and doing odd jobs
to be able to afford the music he liked.
“ When I got to the 8th grade,” he relates, “I went to a camp where a counselor exposed me to a lot of cool bands that were along the lines of metal and punk and ska and hardcore. I was already into metal at that point. I got to like Metallica and Metal Church, Sepultura and Slayer, but at that point, some of those bands like Fishbone and Primus, Faith No More, Fugazi, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and then when I got out I started going to the shows and saw Fugazi and other bands like that.”
As a kid he liked playing sports, but music was mainly his thing. As a young teen, smoking weed and drinking killed his athletic aspirations. That’s when the music went from being something that he just listened to and became something that he pursued with a dogged determination. Initially just messing around with a guitar and different percussion, he eventually joined up with someone from his neighborhood.
During those early days, Jasta held all sorts of jobs to fund his dream. He worked at a little screenprinting/store/graphic design thing called Odyssey in New Haven. He worked at the Colony Inn with Hatebreed’s old drummer Nick (whose mother got him the job as a prep cook). He worked for different bars and clubs doing the door or setting up shows, helping local promoters and bands.
It was while working at these clubs that he began to see what it took to get a band really going. By that time he was into hardcore as well as metal and wanted to try to revive the hardcore scene where he lived in Connecticut. But there was a real uphill battle to get it all going.
“ I’d say the violence thing in New York really killed the clubs and a lot of New York bands looked to play Connecticut because there were some clubs like Nightbreed, and the Attack, and the Urban Jungle. These were places where bands like Agnostic Front and Madball and 25 Ta Life and bands that wouldn’t normally be able to play in New York because of different clubs being shut down and things like that. When Hatebreed started in ‘ 95 I was setting up shows everywhere at different base and skate parks and VFW halls and stuff.”
Taking his cues from the do-it-yourself ethics of early NYC punk and hardcore bands, they played anywhere they could, got their equipment to the gigs by any means necessary, and shamelessly promoted themselves by postering and hawking 45s and t-shirts at every stop along the way.
“ In the beginning when we would play, and even now, it’s the same thing,” says Jasta emphatically.
“ Whether we play in front of 11 kids and it’s for no money, it’s always been one of those things where I thought ‘wow, if I could actually pay my rent by doing this, it would be great’. And I just kept at it. Sometimes it’s a bumout because of all the things that are contingent upon having to get paid.
But that’s why we still play shows for $100. When we opened for Slipknot they paid us 50 fucking bucks, but we did it. We told them, ‘look, we want the opportunity; it’s not about the money’. We want to be able to get out there and give.”
And give he does, 120% every night. By the end of 1996, Hatebreed became the top-selling band for indie distributor Victory Records. With the release of their full-length debut Satisfaction Is The Death of Desire in ‘97, Hatebreed became road dogs by hopping on tours with acts as varied as Agnostic Front, Entombed, Soulfly, Motorhead, and Danzig. It was a campaign to bring their brand of metalcore to as many people as possible.
By the summer of 2001, vocalist Jasta, guitarist Sean Martin, then-guitarist Lou Richards, bassist Chris Beattie, and drummer Matt Byrne had taken the best of the NY hardcore sound, added the brutality of early 90s death metal and thrash, and positively pummeled the OZZfest crowds with their sidestage performances.
“ You’ve got to gain one fan at a time, and you’ve just got to do what you do and hope people
can feel it, says Jasta. “We were lucky to have that opportunity because a lot of people did feel it. A lot of people have come up to us after the fact and said ‘if it wasn’t for OZZfest I wouldn’t know about your band.’”
March 2002 saw their first major label release for Universal titled Perseverance. Produced by Matt Hyde (Slayer, Porno For Pyros, No Doubt) and mixed by Randy Staub (U2, Metallica,
Nickelback), the disc pushes Hatebreed’s boundaries and the listener’s eardrums to the extreme. Perseverance is filled with hard-edged extreme sounds and equally
hard-edged lyrical content. The first single and video for “I Will Be Heard” announces emphatically the angst of the younger generation (as well as a few older ones). Other compositions such as “Proven”, “A Call For Blood”, and “Unloved” bring out a style of lyrics that really tells it like it is. Jasta says that his lyrics take hatred and negativity and use them as a motivation for a more positive direction.
” You can, in any aspect of your life, whether it be with your career or with your relationships, or with your music, take the negative energy that surrounds you and have it at least achieve a solution in whatever problem you’ re facing. I don’t have all the answers. I just know that in certain cases, even in my own life, music is great. It’s an escape. It can take you to a place. I’m glad I can do that for somebody because that’s the kind of record I wanted to make. I didn’t want to just always have a stigma of being a violent and negative band.”
“ When I got to the 8th grade,” he relates, “I went to a camp where a counselor exposed me to a lot of cool bands that were along the lines of metal and punk and ska and hardcore. I was already into metal at that point. I got to like Metallica and Metal Church, Sepultura and Slayer, but at that point, some of those bands like Fishbone and Primus, Faith No More, Fugazi, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and then when I got out I started going to the shows and saw Fugazi and other bands like that.”
As a kid he liked playing sports, but music was mainly his thing. As a young teen, smoking weed and drinking killed his athletic aspirations. That’s when the music went from being something that he just listened to and became something that he pursued with a dogged determination. Initially just messing around with a guitar and different percussion, he eventually joined up with someone from his neighborhood.
During those early days, Jasta held all sorts of jobs to fund his dream. He worked at a little screenprinting/store/graphic design thing called Odyssey in New Haven. He worked at the Colony Inn with Hatebreed’s old drummer Nick (whose mother got him the job as a prep cook). He worked for different bars and clubs doing the door or setting up shows, helping local promoters and bands.
It was while working at these clubs that he began to see what it took to get a band really going. By that time he was into hardcore as well as metal and wanted to try to revive the hardcore scene where he lived in Connecticut. But there was a real uphill battle to get it all going.
“ I’d say the violence thing in New York really killed the clubs and a lot of New York bands looked to play Connecticut because there were some clubs like Nightbreed, and the Attack, and the Urban Jungle. These were places where bands like Agnostic Front and Madball and 25 Ta Life and bands that wouldn’t normally be able to play in New York because of different clubs being shut down and things like that. When Hatebreed started in ‘ 95 I was setting up shows everywhere at different base and skate parks and VFW halls and stuff.”
Taking his cues from the do-it-yourself ethics of early NYC punk and hardcore bands, they played anywhere they could, got their equipment to the gigs by any means necessary, and shamelessly promoted themselves by postering and hawking 45s and t-shirts at every stop along the way.
“ In the beginning when we would play, and even now, it’s the same thing,” says Jasta emphatically.
“ Whether we play in front of 11 kids and it’s for no money, it’s always been one of those things where I thought ‘wow, if I could actually pay my rent by doing this, it would be great’. And I just kept at it. Sometimes it’s a bumout because of all the things that are contingent upon having to get paid.
But that’s why we still play shows for $100. When we opened for Slipknot they paid us 50 fucking bucks, but we did it. We told them, ‘look, we want the opportunity; it’s not about the money’. We want to be able to get out there and give.”
And give he does, 120% every night. By the end of 1996, Hatebreed became the top-selling band for indie distributor Victory Records. With the release of their full-length debut Satisfaction Is The Death of Desire in ‘97, Hatebreed became road dogs by hopping on tours with acts as varied as Agnostic Front, Entombed, Soulfly, Motorhead, and Danzig. It was a campaign to bring their brand of metalcore to as many people as possible.
By the summer of 2001, vocalist Jasta, guitarist Sean Martin, then-guitarist Lou Richards, bassist Chris Beattie, and drummer Matt Byrne had taken the best of the NY hardcore sound, added the brutality of early 90s death metal and thrash, and positively pummeled the OZZfest crowds with their sidestage performances.
“ You’ve got to gain one fan at a time, and you’ve just got to do what you do and hope people
can feel it, says Jasta. “We were lucky to have that opportunity because a lot of people did feel it. A lot of people have come up to us after the fact and said ‘if it wasn’t for OZZfest I wouldn’t know about your band.’”
March 2002 saw their first major label release for Universal titled Perseverance. Produced by Matt Hyde (Slayer, Porno For Pyros, No Doubt) and mixed by Randy Staub (U2, Metallica,
Nickelback), the disc pushes Hatebreed’s boundaries and the listener’s eardrums to the extreme. Perseverance is filled with hard-edged extreme sounds and equally
hard-edged lyrical content. The first single and video for “I Will Be Heard” announces emphatically the angst of the younger generation (as well as a few older ones). Other compositions such as “Proven”, “A Call For Blood”, and “Unloved” bring out a style of lyrics that really tells it like it is. Jasta says that his lyrics take hatred and negativity and use them as a motivation for a more positive direction.
” You can, in any aspect of your life, whether it be with your career or with your relationships, or with your music, take the negative energy that surrounds you and have it at least achieve a solution in whatever problem you’ re facing. I don’t have all the answers. I just know that in certain cases, even in my own life, music is great. It’s an escape. It can take you to a place. I’m glad I can do that for somebody because that’s the kind of record I wanted to make. I didn’t want to just always have a stigma of being a violent and negative band.”