ALTERED STATES are a new band from Dublin who came out of nowhere towards the end of last year. Sharing a member with fellow Dubliners Crows, there’s still a hardcore element to this young DIY band, but Altered States are primarily more of a sludged-out, doom-driven raucous affair than the straight up fast hardcore of their brother band. I caught up with guitarist/vocalist Dave King to get the story on these fresh faced, volume loving riff mongers.
So Dave let’s start at the start – how did Altered States come into being?
Altered States formed in the back of a mitsubishi colt in August 2012. We were listening to Type O Negative and hot boxing the car when decided that we should start a band. We’ve known each other since we were about 12 and had played in shitty bands together so we knew it would be a laugh. Although we sound absolutely nothing like Type O.
Stream Altered States’ raw two song demo here!:
Tell me a bit about the new two song demo you have online.
The two song demo was recorded by the lovely Cormac Bennet (who also recorded the Sodb demo) in a small practice space on the north side of Dublin.
“JLO” is about growing up being associated with a subculture that is well known for not seeing eye to eye with the Garda. I grew up skateboarding. Me and my friends always had problems with the Gardai (Irish police), from being told to leave an area to getting our skateboards confiscated even to the point of getting a JLO (juvenile liaison officer), which is essentially having a shitty old woman who works with the Garda coming out to your house, sitting you down and telling you that you’re a bold boy, making you feel like you’re a worthless piece of shit in front of your parents for riding around on a piece of wood with four wheels. It’s about feeling frustrated and angry at the fact that we were children and we put up with so much crap that we could have easily stood up to if we only knew better at the time.
“Humans as Animals” is the second song. It’s about being born, living to work, dying and being forgotten about. We’re born to work and it’s very hard to break that mould.
You mention skating there. Do all the band skate? Do you feel underground metal, hc and skating still fit together the way they did in the past?
3 of the 4 members skate. Skateboarding and hardcore have always gone hand in hand. They’re both fast and aggressive so they work together. One of my earliest memories of skateboarding is being down in Ramp N Rail, which was a independently owned skatepark (none of this council bullshit) which was ran by skaters for skaters. They used to play a lot of the Tony Hawks soundtracks which were full of really great songs from great bands. I think that without skateboarding, I’d be fairly clueless to punk and stuff because I would have never been exposed to punk and hardcore and it was bands like Dystopia and Noothgrush who were sludge bands associated with the punk scene which got me listening to the heavier, slower side of heavy music, along with seeing and hearing local bands playing that kind of stuff
You’ve decided to release it purely as a download. Why is that, rather than releasing it as a physical version?
We won’t be releasing the demo on a physical release. The demo is the first two songs we wrote that we were pretty happy with so we made a bit of shit move and decided to record them straight away. As much as we’re happy with the songs, we’re not happy enough to release them properly.
Is it a goal for Altered States to tour any time soon?
Yeah, definitely. I’m away volunteering for a lot of summer so it’s a no go for the next few months but it’s something we definitely want to do. We’ll probably play around different parts of Ireland over the coming months, but as far as touring outside of Ireland, hopefully we’ll be able to get something sorted before the end of the year. Touring is a big part of playing music for me. Listening to a release is great, but for me, music is all about the live stuff. There’s been so many times where I’ve heard a band and thought it was alright, but seeing that band live changed my opinion completely. Some bands are made for live shows.
What’s next?
We’re looking into putting out a split. We’ve a couple of labels who have expressed some interest so it’s just a matter of recording our side of it, sending it on to some bands that we’re into and seeing if they’re up for it. I guess if we struggle with finding a band who we’re into and who are cool for doing a split, we’ll just release a tape. Who knows really.
The obvious final question here: does the name come from the movie, or is it just a reference to your love of various illicit substances? And what’s your favourite image out of all the fucked up visuals in that movie?
I guess it’s a bit of both. I mean the initial idea to call the band Altered States was from the film. It’s one of my favorite films, visually.I think my favorite mental part when he’s tripping and sees the huge group of people dancing around a huge rock with masks on, then there’s a quick image shown of two characters sitting at a table infront of a meadow with giant yellow flowers. The contrast between the both is weird as fuck and creeps me out a bit every time I watch it.
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