CRUSHER Magazine: punk/metal/hardcore/industrial: Feature: Hed P.E.

     The two became fast friends and decided to join forces, working together for a while before they hooked up with guitarists Wes “Westyle” Geer and Chad “Chizad” Benekos, drummer B.C., and the turntable madman known as DJ Product 1969 (aka Doug Boyce) in late ‘93/early ’94. The Orange County sextet stayed together for 10 years and released 3 albums, with the most recent being Blackout, before Benekos split and was replaced by Sonny Mayo (who came through the ranks of hardcore groups like Snot and Amen).
     Hailing from Newcastle, a North England town known for it’s peculiar dialect called Geordie, Mawk began his musical odyssey at a young age inspired by the influence of his father’s penchant for jazz. Developing a love for all things brass, he migrated through a span of instruments before settling on the decidedly un-rock’n’roll choice of the trombone.
     “My dad, when I was such a young kid, all he listened to was traditional jazz,” he says. “I love hearing the saxophone, the clarinet, the trumpet – and I ended up moving up from trumpet to tuba-- which was kind of ridiculous for a 12-year-old guy, trying to drag around this instrument as big as I was. But I was already getting an ear for, like, the low frequencies for bass without even realizing it. It just felt right. Then it took another couple years to finally persuade my parents that I was serious, and that they should get me a bass, and that it wasn’t going to sit and gather dust in the corner of my room. Finally they did, and that was it.”
     That was 1981. With a rudimentary knowledge of the bass end of things, it wasn’t long before he had mastered the instrument well enough to take a stab at public performance with local groups. Leaving England was a big step, but a necessary one for Mawk to get to where he is now. Settling in the sleepy little burb of Huntington Beach, a scant 90 minutes north of San Diego and 45 minutes south of Los Angeles, he became part of the scene there that has been a breeding ground for so many.

Playing a brand of music that was a hyper-genetic fusion of punk, rap, funk, and metal that they termed “G-punk” for “gangsta punk”, the band debuted their hybridized hardcore metallic hip-hop at the now-defunct Club 369 sandwiched on a bill between rising-stars Korn and the then unknown Deftones in 1994. The next year, 1995, saw the group release their Church of Realities ep and begin a grinding touring schedule with Korn. 1997 saw the release of their self-titled ep, which began to get a bit of notice with the single “Serpent Boy”, but it was also about the time that things started to get sticky for Young who, after having been blissfully unknown and illegal in America for 10 years, was unceremoniously deported from Canada on a return from his native U.K., making the rest of the touring schedule rather harrowing [as if it wasn’t harrowing enough being booed during your set by the headliners’ (P.O.D.’s) fans].

By year 2000 and the release of the single “Broke”, from the album of the same name, (hed) p.e. was making a lot of noise, getting played on radio, and touring their asses off with the likes of Papa Roach and Linkin Park, but having very little commercially or financially to show for it.
The new album is still that hybridized mix, but a lot less hardcore than earlier releases by the band. Fans of their hard-partying, hard-assed compositions will be pleasantly surprised at the new direction.

     “I would say we were more hardcore in our early days,” he comments. “Our first album is pretty brutal. Then we mellowed out a little with age. Why? I don’t know, why does wine get finer as the years go by? When you’re young – early 20s – and you’re fired up, you know, you’ve got a lot of angst. You get a little older, you don’t really need to be so angry and pissed off every day. And now we’re waking up in the morning out here, it’s pretty good. I don’t really have anything to be pissed off at anymore.”
     The thing that makes (hed) so different from other rap-metal groups is their unique use of the tones, textures, and phrasing of reggae. Where fellow Orange County alumni No Doubt came more from the ska tip and progressed into pure dancehall-style reggae, (hed) started and ended with the divine Bob Marley as their influence.
     “I go more to the Bob Marley tip to get mellow,” admits Mawk. “It’s a relaxation, and I think I read somewhere that reggae is the most spiritually evolved form of music. I don’t know who made that call, but they’re right. We do flirt with reggae. We had a song called “Swan Dive” on our last album that had a hint of reggae. I did the music for that song, but then I handed it over to Jahred.”
     “I have a studio at my house, and then I handed it over to him,” elaborates Young on how these things come about. “He took the music and, at that point, I’m kind of up in the air. I don’t know where it’s going to go. He could’ve come back to me a day or two later and the song could’ve gone hardcore. It could’ve gone happy; it could’ve gone sad. I have no idea. It’s kind of exciting, you know? I don’t know how the song’s going to come out. The same with “Suck It Up.” He’ll bury me. I give it to him and it’s like, ‘Oh, what’s he going to do?’ So he came back with “Getaway” and it was awesome. And actually, it’s been revised since then. Like, this is the second version. Lyrically he changed it a little.”

     “We do like to flirt with the reggae,” he reiterates. “I think our DJ introduced us to that years ago, because we all came from more of a metal background. We recruited this vagrant, homeless-looking DJ Product into our band. He played for Sublime for a little while, and he’s a surfer and just listened to reggae and smoked a bunch of weed. He was the antithesis of us for a while, but he got us all into Bob Marley. Now I’m hooked on reggae to relax. And DJ Product, to relax, he listens to Slayer and Sepultura and Soulfly. He’s come full circle after growing up on Bob Marley. Now he’s discovering his rock roots.”
     The first single off the album is “Blackout”, with the appropriate accompanying video, which was filmed in downtown L.A. at the once upscale Hotel Alexander.
     “You could tell by looking at it, it must have been an awesome place back in the 20s and 30s when downtown L.A. was a place to be,” says Mawk. “But now you come out at nighttime, you think you’re in a war zone or something. There’s millions of homeless people in little tents, sitting around the streets. So it’s pretty crazy. And they’re amongst the skyscrapers, which is kind of a trip for L.A. It’s not a downtown like New York. It’s purely business in that area, and then once the sun goes down and the work people go home it’s like Mad Max.”
     The video itself is a somewhat conceptual/performance piece with a rather unique effect of the people in it being systematically blacked out. But it’s not a computer effect, unlike many of today’s videos.
     “They had to paint us all black and we had to wear black for like the last half of the shoot,” he says. “So we’re all in black body paint trying to jump around and have a good time, which is easy for the first six or seven times, but when you get up to like, take 37, and you’re still in this black body paint from head to foot and you’re trying to sweat and you can’t even get it out, it’s pretty crazy.”
     Ah, what the average musician will do for his art. But then again, the guys in (hed) p.e. have always gone the extra mile to simply satisfy themselves. Still, it’s alarming that white guys like Fred Durst and Latino guys like Sonny of P.O.D. have been more successful at the rap rock formula than a black man like Jahred. Blackout is a more commercial sounding album than any of their previous releases, but that doesn’t mean that the rap has gone entirely from their musical repertoire.
     “That’s just the kind of the band we are,” explains Young. “We’ll come out and do something totally different for one album, and next time we’ll backtrack. Just to give you a better example, we’re already working on a new project. Jared and I have a new band called Hectic now, which also features DJ Product. And that is about 50 percent rap. We went back to the hardcore – more like vintage MCUD from how our singing used to be years ago.”
     Currently finishing up the Jagermeister tour with Saliva and Systematic, the boys will be sure to continue touring in support of Blackout through the summer, converting more fans to their unique hybridized style.

	(HED) P.E. by Christine Natanael	LINKS: hedpe.com jiverecords.com
	“I came to the States in ’90. I came looking for a band, and I found him drunk, propping up a bar one night back in ’91. We started a band then, and we’ve been together ever since.” Mark “Mawk” Young, bassist for (hed) p.e., laughs as he tells the story of how he met vocalist Jahred (Shaine, aka MCUD).
The two became fast friends and decided to join forces, working together for a while before they hooked up with guitarists Wes “Westyle” Geer and Chad “Chizad” Benekos, drummer B.C., and the turntable madman known as DJ Product 1969 (aka Doug Boyce) in late ‘93/early ’94. The Orange County sextet stayed together for 10 years and released 3 albums, with the most recent being Blackout, before Benekos split and was replaced by Sonny Mayo (who came through the ranks of hardcore groups like Snot and Amen). Hailing from Newcastle, a North England town known for it’s peculiar dialect called Geordie, Mawk began his musical odyssey at a young age inspired by the influence of his father’s penchant for jazz. Developing a love for all things brass, he migrated through a span of instruments before settling on the decidedly un-rock’n’roll choice of the trombone. “My dad, when I was such a young kid, all he listened to was traditional jazz,” he says. “I love hearing the saxophone, the clarinet, the trumpet – and I ended up moving up from trumpet to tuba-- which was kind of ridiculous for a 12-year-old guy, trying to drag around this instrument as big as I was. But I was already getting an ear for, like, the low frequencies for bass without even realizing it. It just felt right. Then it took another couple years to finally persuade my parents that I was serious, and that they should get me a bass, and that it wasn’t going to sit and gather dust in the corner of my room. Finally they did, and that was it.” That was 1981. With a rudimentary knowledge of the bass end of things, it wasn’t long before he had mastered the instrument well enough to take a stab at public performance with local groups. Leaving England was a big step, but a necessary one for Mawk to get to where he is now. Settling in the sleepy little burb of Huntington Beach, a scant 90 minutes north of San Diego and 45 minutes south of Los Angeles, he became part of the scene there that has been a breeding ground for so many. Playing a brand of music that was a hyper-genetic fusion of punk, rap, funk, and metal that they termed “G-punk” for “gangsta punk”, the band debuted their hybridized hardcore metallic hip-hop at the now-defunct Club 369 sandwiched on a bill between rising-stars Korn and the then unknown Deftones in 1994. The next year, 1995, saw the group release their Church of Realities ep and begin a grinding touring schedule with Korn. 1997 saw the release of their self-titled ep, which began to get a bit of notice with the single “Serpent Boy”, but it was also about the time that things started to get sticky for Young who, after having been blissfully unknown and illegal in America for 10 years, was unceremoniously deported from Canada on a return from his native U.K., making the rest of the touring schedule rather harrowing [as if it wasn’t harrowing enough being booed during your set by the headliners’ (P.O.D.’s) fans]. By year 2000 and the release of the single “Broke”, from the album of the same name, (hed) p.e. was making a lot of noise, getting played on radio, and touring their asses off with the likes of Papa Roach and Linkin Park, but having very little commercially or financially to show for it. The new album is still that hybridized mix, but a lot less hardcore than earlier releases by the band. Fans of their hard-partying, hard-assed compositions will be pleasantly surprised at the new direction. “I would say we were more hardcore in our early days,” he comments. “Our first album is pretty brutal. Then we mellowed out a little with age. Why? I don’t know, why does wine get finer as the years go by? When you’re young – early 20s – and you’re fired up, you know, you’ve got a lot of angst. You get a little older, you don’t really need to be so angry and pissed off every day. And now we’re waking up in the morning out here, it’s pretty good. I don’t really have anything to be pissed off at anymore.” The thing that makes (hed) so different from other rap-metal groups is their unique use of the tones, textures, and phrasing of reggae. Where fellow Orange County alumni No Doubt came more from the ska tip and progressed into pure dancehall-style reggae, (hed) started and ended with the divine Bob Marley as their influence. “I go more to the Bob Marley tip to get mellow,” admits Mawk. “It’s a relaxation, and I think I read somewhere that reggae is the most spiritually evolved form of music. I don’t know who made that call, but they’re right. We do flirt with reggae. We had a song called “Swan Dive” on our last album that had a hint of reggae. I did the music for that song, but then I handed it over to Jahred.” “I have a studio at my house, and then I handed it over to him,” elaborates Young on how these things come about. “He took the music and, at that point, I’m kind of up in the air. I don’t know where it’s going to go. He could’ve come back to me a day or two later and the song could’ve gone hardcore. It could’ve gone happy; it could’ve gone sad. I have no idea. It’s kind of exciting, you know? I don’t know how the song’s going to come out. The same with “Suck It Up.” He’ll bury me. I give it to him and it’s like, ‘Oh, what’s he going to do?’ So he came back with “Getaway” and it was awesome. And actually, it’s been revised since then. Like, this is the second version. Lyrically he changed it a little.” “We do like to flirt with the reggae,” he reiterates. “I think our DJ introduced us to that years ago, because we all came from more of a metal background. We recruited this vagrant, homeless-looking DJ Product into our band. He played for Sublime for a little while, and he’s a surfer and just listened to reggae and smoked a bunch of weed. He was the antithesis of us for a while, but he got us all into Bob Marley. Now I’m hooked on reggae to relax. And DJ Product, to relax, he listens to Slayer and Sepultura and Soulfly. He’s come full circle after growing up on Bob Marley. Now he’s discovering his rock roots.” The first single off the album is “Blackout”, with the appropriate accompanying video, which was filmed in downtown L.A. at the once upscale Hotel Alexander. “You could tell by looking at it, it must have been an awesome place back in the 20s and 30s when downtown L.A. was a place to be,” says Mawk. “But now you come out at nighttime, you think you’re in a war zone or something. There’s millions of homeless people in little tents, sitting around the streets. So it’s pretty crazy. And they’re amongst the skyscrapers, which is kind of a trip for L.A. It’s not a downtown like New York. It’s purely business in that area, and then once the sun goes down and the work people go home it’s like Mad Max.” The video itself is a somewhat conceptual/performance piece with a rather unique effect of the people in it being systematically blacked out. But it’s not a computer effect, unlike many of today’s videos. “They had to paint us all black and we had to wear black for like the last half of the shoot,” he says. “So we’re all in black body paint trying to jump around and have a good time, which is easy for the first six or seven times, but when you get up to like, take 37, and you’re still in this black body paint from head to foot and you’re trying to sweat and you can’t even get it out, it’s pretty crazy.” Ah, what the average musician will do for his art. But then again, the guys in (hed) p.e. have always gone the extra mile to simply satisfy themselves. Still, it’s alarming that white guys like Fred Durst and Latino guys like Sonny of P.O.D. have been more successful at the rap rock formula than a black man like Jahred. Blackout is a more commercial sounding album than any of their previous releases, but that doesn’t mean that the rap has gone entirely from their musical repertoire. “That’s just the kind of the band we are,” explains Young. “We’ll come out and do something totally different for one album, and next time we’ll backtrack. Just to give you a better example, we’re already working on a new project. Jared and I have a new band called Hectic now, which also features DJ Product. And that is about 50 percent rap. We went back to the hardcore – more like vintage MCUD from how our singing used to be years ago.” Currently finishing up the Jagermeister tour with Saliva and Systematic, the boys will be sure to continue touring in support of Blackout through the summer, converting more fans to their unique hybridized style.