Earlier today I interviewed Toon, guitarist in Brabant Hardcore band Malfunction, as part of my look into the scene over there. Here's what he had to say.
So, you've been part of the Brabant Scene for 11 years now, how have you seen it change?
Yeah it changed a lot over the years.
When i was starting to go shows you had this so called 'eurocore scene'.
That was a big thing during half the nineties till i would say 2002.
At that time bands were heavy influenced by NYHC bands.
Raw vocals, a heavy guitar sound and simple old school riffs.
Bands like Backfire!, Discipline (early days), Tech-9, No Turning Back, Violation of Trust and Right Direction
were huge during these days. Some of these bands are still going strong, especially NTB.
I was a big fan of these bands.
It was a great time to be an teenager in that period.
A lot of fun and a lot of beers haha.
No one was talking about the right clothes, the right caps and the right sneakers.
It's was an open scene. These bands were also playing with rock'n'roll, metal and psychobilly bands.
Nobody didn't care. During that time were Eindhoven (Noord Brabant) and Maastricht (Limburg) the
hardcore capitals. You had the 'European Hardcore Party's in both cities, lots of venues and the legendary
Dynamo Open Air festival in Eindhoven.
Nowadays Maastricht is more dead than alive but Eindhoven is still good for considering loud music
and Tilburg (Noord-Brabant) too.
Nowadays the scene is more divited.
Most of the time you see shows with one type of hardcore
Only metalcore bands, only hardcore thrash bands, only nyhc bands etc.
At the other hand you see more diversity considering hardcorepunk music and that's a good thing.
Kids like to experiment more and create their own sound.
'This Routine is Hell' from Utrecht is a good example.
Great band with their own sound.
...You also see that quiet some young kids are starting to go to shows.
But you know, with these big (hardcore) bands on MTV and all these dresscodes it could also be a fase in their life.
Hopefully these kids start picking up instruments too and putting up some shows too in the future.
Sometimes you see only people on shows who are 25+ haha.
I hope kids would stay and put some new energy in the scene.
But i'm quit positive about the Brabant scene, there are a lot's of shows, cool bands and cool labels.
It's also good that younger kids support local bands more and more.
They are not only go to a show when a big US band like Madball is on the bill.
There still young kids who have heart for hardcore.
I've been doing some research about the scene and have found out about bands like Cracks in the walls, State of affairs and of course Malfunction. Is the scene growing and what other bands should people look out for?
There are quiet some good bands from Noord-Brabant. But as i earlier mention, a lot of these people, also in the bands are around for quit some years. It's growing a little but still the older people are most active.
People definly should check out: Said & Done (crossover/hardcore), Human Demise (clevo hardcore), The Butcher (fast 80's), Milkman (fast 80's), On Fire (melodic hardcore), Righteous Kill (punk), Enemy Ground (beatdown), Screw Houston Start Screaming (new school), Noyalty (new school), Laatste Halte (screamo)
Check also the Blog from Rold, the singer of State of Affairs: http://xroldx.blogspot.com/
Do people give bands a lot of support in your scene, because it seems to me like mainland Europe has more of a community than here in the UK? ...Holland is a small country so you can better talk about the Dutch hardcore scene than the Brabant hardcore scene
because it's easy to play all across the country.
It's also easy to go Belgium or Germany to you know.
Especially Belgium has a good climate for playing shows.
There are a lot of youth-centres who are doing shows.
But yeah, bands support each other and you never play in and empty venue in Holland.
There are always kids who want to check out some cool loud bands.
PS: Other bands from Holland and not especially Noord-Brabant who are worth to check out are:
No Turning Back (nyhc), New Morality (nyhc), Cornered (nyhc), This Routine is Hell (hardcorepunk),
The Real Danger (punkrock), All For Nothing (nyhc), Antillectual (punkrock)
Do Malfunction have anything in the pipeline regarding recordings or gigs?
Our demo'10 is out now. We recorded it our selves because it's pretty expensive to hire a studio and
it's cool to do it by yourself. We are a typical DIY band. We like the raw old school sound so we are
pretty happy with our demo. It's not a clean, modern record, just a straight forward record.
....About gigs: It's pretty hard to get shows. We're a new band and we have are own sound.
I think a lot of people have to get used to us.
It's also about having the right connections because most of venues put up shows with the bands that are
around for a long time. But we keep emailing to people haha.
And if we don't have a show we put one up ourselves.
Last month we played two great matinees but our next show is in March so we defently looking for more shows.
Would Malfunction be coming to the UK to play any shows in the future?
That would be great! I think everbody in the band would love to do that!
If you have connections and people who want to help us out that would be awesome!
Our singer and other guitarplayer are also in the band Laatste Halte so it's easy to bring them too cuz it's
them with another drummer haha.
I know Frankie from Cracks in Wall and they have toured a couple of times outside Holland so maybe we can
bring them for the experience. And maybe it's a good idea to bring the straight-edge kids from State Of Affairs for
driving the bus because we like to have a good drink you know, hehe :-)
Allright...let's see what the future will bring, never say never.
