Black Black Black Interview with Jason Alexander Byers: Acquiring Targets

Posted in Features on May 31st, 2013 by JJ Koczan

The self-titled debut from Brooklyn’s Black Black Black arrived with minimal fanfare. There was no hype machine at work to herald its coming or viral video campaign to tease song snippets. First there wasn’t an album and then there was.

By the account of vocalist Jason Alexander Byers, this follows suit with the general ethic at the heart of the band to be as bullshit-free as possible at all times. His telling of how Black Black Black got together — he moved to Brooklyn from Ohio, knew guitarist Jacob Cox from their shared tenure in Disengage and they started the band with bassist Johnathan Swafford and drummer Jeff Ottenbacher — and his recollections of the three-month songwriting process for the album’s 12 tracks and the two-week recording with Andrew Schneider are the epitome of sans drama. They wanted to make these things happen, and they happened.

For that being the case, however, Black Black Black‘s Black Black Black — you’ll never guess what color the cover is — charts a surprisingly diverse course across its span, from the vaguely ritualized overtones of the “Seance for a Sucker” intro and the noise rock boogie of “Pentagram On,” to which Unsane‘s Dave Curran contributes guest screams, on through the blistering punk intensity of “Redeath” and the dreamy ’90s-style alt melodies of “Lexipro Devil.” Through all this runs a thread of heavy tones captured at their most crisp by Schneider‘s production and a still-lighthearted attitude that comes through in clever titles like “Light Light Light” and “Drum 0))))” even as Byers‘ graphic contributions to the album — a 40-page artbook released with the vinyl through Aqualamb Records, detailed here — leave grim, lasting impressions.

Byers‘ explanation? “You don’t want to do a steady 4/4 all the time. It gets boring.”

Fair enough. Black Black Black will be joining the likes of Lo-Pan, Gozu, Borracho and Supermachine at the Eye of the Stoned Goat 3 fest at The Acheron in Brooklyn on July 27 (more info here) and a follow-up to the self-titled is already in the works. In the interview that follows, Byers gives the background on the band’s origins and some of his theories on how the visual and aural sides tie together.

Complete interview is after the jump. Please enjoy:

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Black Black Black Come to Life with “Redeath” Video

Posted in Bootleg Theater on January 17th, 2013 by JJ Koczan

The day’s wearing on and I was just starting to drag a bit ago when along came this brand new video from Brooklyn’s own Black Black Black for the song “Redeath” from their self-titled album (sort of reviewed here and also here) to wake my ass up and get me through the rest of the day. Black Black Black (which boasts ex-members of Disengage) will release the aptly-named Black Black Black on Aqualamb Records, and just as soon as I stop hemming and hawing over every single fucking letter of every single fucking question, I promise I’ll get a Six Dumb Questions email interview going with them because the album kicks ass. Also hope to see them live at some point in the near future, so keep an eye out for much more to come either way.

In the meantime, here’s the clip for “Redeath,” which will probably take you less time to watch than it took to read the paragraph above:

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