DESPISE YOU - The Battle of Los Angeles
Words and graphics by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Monday 10th April 2023
“…The dirtiest place I’ve ever been in is Los Angeles. It’s fucking filthy right now, dude.”
Bleak, gnarly powerviolence, DESPISE YOU fuses the punch of hardcore with the sickening velocity of grind. Forged in early nineties California in the wake of the L.A. riots, they’re bringing their high-velocity hatred to Australia in May, supported by grind maniacs CHOOF. Frontman Chris Elder spoke to Sense about the fall of the City of Angels…
DESPISE YOU are coming to Australia for the first time ever. What impressions do you have of this country?
I was just talking to our bass player, “I wonder if Australians understand how big THE BEE GEES were to the street culture in Los Angeles?” Because it’s very significant.
Yeah?
Yeah, absolutely. [Laughs] Yeah, big time. That’s like [some] of the heavy-hitter anthems in the ‘hood over here in L.A. … The gang members love them here! Even Andy also!
So you’d see BEE GEES in graffiti tags and stuff?
No, just that they’d play it, like, a lot, when they’re hanging out and doing their thing, you know? How Deep is Your Love, Too Much Heaven … I Want To Be Your Everything. Those three, most surely, are ‘hood anthems over here. [Laughs]
Chris, I’m not going to lie, this interview has already taken a sharp left turn. I was not expecting that. [Laughs]
[Laughs] Well, I’m good for those!
You are taking CHOOF around as your opener. Do you have the slightest idea what you’re getting yourself into? Because they’re fucking maniacs.
Yeah, they’re maniacs huh? I didn’t know. We didn’t have any hand in that, so hopefully everything’s cool. [Laughs] I don’t think we’re maniacs, but we’ll see what’s up!
I do little end of year wrap ups every year – top ten songs, top gigs, all that shit. I literally created a new award for them called “Most Dangerous Band” because I was genuinely afraid for my safety up the front of one of their gigs. The singer is like G.G. Allin reincarnated. [Laughs]
Fuck yeah! We’re down! We’re ready!
You guys are going to get along like a fucking house on fire.
We’re ready to meet ‘em and give ‘em some big-ass hugs. [Laughs]
I understand that the band formed in 1994, but you guys didn’t play a live show until you reformed in 2007. Why were you initially hesitant to perform in a live environment? Was there something stopping you?
Nah, not really. It was just that everybody in the band was in different bands at the time. Everybody else in the band … a guy from EXCRUTIATING TERROR, a guy from STAPLED SHUT, NAUSEA … Our singer at the time was still in high school. So everybody had their own thing going on. I was doing my record label and a bunch of other shit, you know? So we just never got it together to play live, really. It wasn’t like, “Oh, we’re never going to play live.” It was just that we didn’t really talk about it. We just practiced and got together and made songs, and then we recorded them, and then put them out … I mean, I put them out with my label. So it wasn’t any kind of grand plan or anything, we just never did, because everybody was doing their own thing, you know? It was kind of just a cool thing to do when we got together, to write songs, because those guys … They weren’t “confined”, that’s the wrong fucking word, but like, they had their bands where they were doing that music with that style, and then DESPISE was something that wasn’t really limited to those things.
Show me a drummer in the scene who isn’t already in four bands…
Oh yeah. If you want to tour the world and whatever, be a drummer, because they’re in short supply, that’s for sure.
What was it like when you first bought DESPISE YOU into the live environment?
It was fine, you know. It was good. We played a couple of shows early on that were really good, and then we just started going other places and doing more stuff, you know? It was a little nerve-wracking for me, because I had never done it before up to that point … I was never in any other bands, just this band, you know? So that was nerve-wracking the first couple times, but after that, it was fine. It’s still nerve-wracking, but not as extreme, you know?
Would you call it stage fright a bit? Or just the normal anxiety that comes from presenting in a live environment?
Yeah, I mean, I think the feeling is that you’re ready to fucking do it, and you want to do it now, you know? That’s how I feel. A long time ago, it was, “Oh shit, now I’ve got to do this? Fuck.” Now it’s like, “I want to do it. I wish it would happen sooner.” You want to get it going, you know?
“I wish I wasn’t spending twenty-three hours a day waiting to play.”
Oh yeah, that’s the worst. [Laughs] You sit around for fucking ten hours waiting to play. Dude, it’s a bit much! But that’s with every band, I’m sure … When we played Mexico City, we got to the club at like seven, and I was looking at the set times and I was like, “Fuck, we don’t play for seven hours” or whatever it was. It was crazy. I want to play right now, you know?
I don’t know how old you are. What kind of era was it when you first started going to shows? Was this mid-to-late eighties? Early nineties?
It would probably have been ’84, BLACK FLAG at the Federal Building in downtown, the Wilshire area. That was the Slip it In era of BLACK FLAG. They played a big show at the Federal Building.
I’ve got to interview Henry Rollins a few times. I fucking love that guy. I finally got around to reading Get in the Van in 2020 and the things that he was saying – and Barney Greenway from NAPALM DEATH said the same thing – that they used to have neo-Nazi skinheads at punk shows, with swastikas on their clothes. I cannot fathom that.
Yeah. I never saw any of that stuff at shows. I’ve heard about it, but that was a long time … that was before I was going to shows, you know? I believe it, but I never saw it myself. But also … where I grew up was 99% black, the neighbourhoods, so it just didn’t happen. I remember reading about it and hearing about it, but I never saw it.
Drug use and urban decay are themes in DESPISE YOU’s music. One of your album covers has someone gripping a heroin syringe between their teeth. Are drugs as much of an issue as they used to be?
Fuck, I think right now in L.A. they’re even more than they used to be. We’ve got so many people dying of overdoses right now in Los Angeles from fentanyl. That makes the fucking heroin shit look like Disneyland. I’ve never taken fentanyl unless I was getting surgery maybe, but there’s people dying every day from fentanyl, and it’s killing people, for sure. If it’s not killing them, it’s fucking their lives up forever. They’re never going to recover. I would say that L.A. right now is in a pretty dark spot, you know? L.A. is like a rollercoaster. You have peaks and valleys, and right now, we’re in a bit of a valley, you know? We were in a valley in the early to mid-nineties, and we’re officially in one right now, because things are super violent right now, and the drug shit is super crazy right now. It’s just bad right now. There’s so much shit going on right now, it feels a little bit like the early nineties, you know?
I remember thinking that when George Floyd was kicking off … Everything is wound so fucking tight, and everyone is on constant edge, and everyone is afraid of saying the wrong thing, and everyone is very fast to take offence. People are just angry.
Yeah. I mean, I saw, when the L.A. riots happened … Before that, leading up to the L.A. riots, we were in an economic recession, people were fucking pissed off. You could feel it. I could feel it, just the tension, waiting in line to buy groceries or something, you know? That was just the final straw that blew it up. I don’t think we’re heading for that again, in L.A., but there’s a definite resurgence in violence and the drug stuff … Crack cocaine, when that hit the scene, I remember, I was just out of high school, and I saw that happen. I watched it. So many people turned desperate, but they were desperate and, like, skittish, you know? Now, they’re desperate and very violent, up in your face. So that’s the difference between those two drug phenomena. We could talk for twenty hours about this shit. [Laughs] I’ve seen a lot of the trends, and there are so many factors that are going into it right now. Everything from district attorneys to politicians to whatever the fuck, and it’s just bad right now. It’s super bad. It’s going to rebound, because it always does – L.A.’s a fucking rad place, and it always will be. Like I said, peaks and valleys. We’re in a valley right now, you know? I commented to a co-worker the other day, the band has travelled all over the world, and the dirtiest place I’ve ever been in is Los Angeles. It’s fucking filthy right now, dude. Garbage everywhere, roads are totally fucking ruined. It looks like shit right now, it does. I’m putting that up against some second-world places, you know what I mean? It wasn’t that dirty at all. Now, in L.A., I would tell people, if you want to come and vacation in L.A., it’s probably best to wait a couple of years … wait until things sort themselves out, because it’s just not good right now. All the tourist attractions that people would generally want to go to, they’re dangerous. They’re very dangerous, especially for tourists, because tourists look like tourists, and they get preyed upon. They do, absolutely.
I’ve been seeing a lot of footage of tent cities and stuff. Homelessness is out of control.
Oh, that shit is everywhere over here. It’s everywhere. But, you know, you put those policies in place, and that’s what happens. If you have a punk rock club and you let little kids drink beer, what’s going to happen? All the little kids are going to go there and drink beer. That’s what you get, you know? I don’t know, man. Outside of maybe murder, they’re not prosecuting any fucking crimes right now. It’s kind of a free-for-all.
They were changing all these rules so that a lot of these crimes that used to be felonies are now misdemeanours and stuff. They’re not even bothering. Businesses are just getting looted because who gives a fuck?
In California, there was a proposition that was voted in, and of course they title it, like, “The Safer Streets Initiative”. It’s like 7000 pages of legal shit, and when people voted yes on it, it decriminalised all shoplifting under $950. So if you want something that’s $800 bucks, just go grab it. It’s not a [felony]. So you get it. You get it a thousand times a day, all day long. And then it forces business to close, and now the old people in San Francisco can’t get prescription drugs because all the CVS and Walgreens have closed because of theft. It’s snowballing, dude. It is what it is. We’re seeing it play out here … I don’t remember this amount of shit going south since maybe the early to mid-nineties. So like I said, right now, we’re in it, you know?
DESPISE YOU tour Australia in May, supported by CHOOF. Tickets available below.
Pictured: DESPISE YOU. Left photo by Albert Licano, right photo by Monica F.
