Issue #34 of New Noise Magazine features an in-depth look at hardcore music (get the issue here). Featuring everyone from your old favorites still releasing cathartic tunes to dynamic live photographers to the scene’s young up-and-comers, New Noise is proud to be shining a spotlight on a hardcore community that is all-inclusive and extremely open. Whether the bands are ripping through their brutally honest lyrics onstage or crushing a breakdown, their energy moves crowds, hearts, and other communities alike. Time to get moved and get movin’!
Trapped Under Ice | Interview with Justice Tripp | By James Alvarez
Trapped Under Ice rose to prominence in the hardcore world on the strength of their punishing 2009 debut, Secrets of the World, and their epic 2011 follow-up, Big Kiss Goodnight. Their sophomore album was a sonic game changer of epic proportions that catapulted the Baltimore-based band to new heights within the hardcore underworld.
Then, in 2013, after years of touring, carving out a name for themselves with their gnarly live shows, and releasing the biggest album of their career, Trapped Under Ice announced their unexpected hiatus from the scene they had just climbed atop of. The band’s members splintered off into other bands who went on to shape the hardcore realm in Trapped Under Ice’s absence, further cementing their legacy as short-lived, modern day icons.
Now, after all these years away, the Trapped Under Ice crew are back and ready to set the world ablaze once again—but this time, completely on their own terms. Their ridiculous new record, Heatwave—out July 21 on their very own Pop Wig Records—is the opening shot of Trapped Under Ice version 2.0’s triumphant return.
“It was definitely the peak of the band at that time when we stopped playing shows,” vocalist Justice Tripp recalls. “With that comes every industry person, every promoter, every manager, every booking agent fighting over you, demanding you ‘do this.’ Everybody thinks they own a piece of the band. There was a point of recognizing we don’t owe anybody anything. We don’t have to do shows for the sake of doing shows. We could go two years without doing shows, and the band would be fine. The band is gonna be what the band is gonna be in two years. It was kind of a ‘fuck you’ to industry people. Not that all industry people are inherently bad by any means—but there are people who want to document it and be a part of something special, and there are people who see it as a quick grab for money. Everyone’s trying to squeeze a dollar out of us, you know what I mean?”
So, at the top of their game, Trapped Under Ice effectively went on ice, announcing a “lengthy hiatus,” but assuring fans that the band were anything but dead. “When you’re on tour with the same people for that long, you just kind of need a break from each other,” Tripp explains. “Not in a bad way. We all stayed best friends, and I talked to everybody on the phone and everything, but it’s cool to have each other without the pressure of doing this tour. People think that we weren’t a band,” he laughs, “but yo, we were still the same people in contact all the time. Writing music, sharing music; we just didn’t want to play shows for two years. It’s not like Trapped Under Ice is my ex-girlfriend. These guys aren’t my ex-friends, they’re my best friends, and this is something we all care about a whole lot no matter what we’re doing. I just love my bandmates; they’re all cool. We’re just on a good page. We all did a lot of growing in these past few years of having freedom to kind of rebuild ourselves as the kind of people who can do a band the way we want. For seven to eight years, I literally did no mental growing as a person. I was a dumbass kid until I had to step away from the band and was like, ‘Shit, who am I?’”
During their hiatus, the fellas in Trapped Under Ice spent time discovering themselves, moving and relocating to different states, and mostly, rocking out in some of the raddest punk and hardcore bands to come out of the scene in years. Diamond Youth, Angel Du$t, Down To Nothing, and Turnstile have been releasing some of the best tunes, playing the wildest shows, and turning maximum heads—and they have all helped expand the Trapped Under Ice legacy. “Diamond [Youth] had been a thing, Turnstile had been a thing, Angel Du$t had been a thing by the time we stopped doing the band full-time,” Tripp says, clarifying that Trapped Under Ice’s hiatus wasn’t a result of their members’ gestating side projects, but rather, the opposite. Each individual project went on to flourish due to their hiatus, and Tripp credits “taking time away to do different bands, meeting new people I wouldn’t have met had I been doing Trapped full-time on the road.”
With acts like Turnstile and Angel Du$t blowing up in their absence, fans couldn’t help but wonder when oh when would Trapped Under Ice return from their self-imposed exile? The answer is now—and it was well worth the wait. “So, we started the band again, and we just wanted to do everything on our terms,” Tripp says proudly. “Doing the record ourselves, booking the shows ourselves. We don’t have to do anything for anybody.” That’s where Pop Wig comes into play. Tripp—alongside Trapped Under Ice drummer and Turnstile screamer Brendan Yates and Angel Du$t and Turnstile drummer Daniel Fang—created Pop Wig on a whim, but with a stacked roster of Trapped Under Ice-associated acts onboard and other artists following suit, their mega DIY label seems poised to become a major force in the underground.
“I’m always mad about something,” Tripp shares, “and I’ve got two friends in my life that have to always hear about it because they’re my better parts, and that’s Dan and Brendan. They’re so proactive, so trustworthy, and [such] positive people—they’re my voice of reason. It was such a common thing, where I’d call them and be like, ‘This label or this agent…’ or ‘I saw this happen to this band I care about,’ or ‘This should not be happening,’ you know? The joke was: ‘I’m gonna start a label!’ Then Brendan was like, ‘Why don’t you?’ He called my bluff. Then it was, ‘Why don’t we?’ since it was always us three having the conversation.”
Thus, Pop Wig was born, creating a new base of operations for Trapped Under Ice and their extended family of bands and allowing Tripp the creative freedom to rock the fuck out forever with every demographic imaginable. “I’m not trying to create music for people trapped in a box, that aren’t interested in exploring,” he says. Instead of the tough guy posturing that certain sects of hardcore have become synonymous with, Tripp is more interested in “creating a space that’s welcoming to anybody,” he says enthusiastically. “Something as simple as having a girl sing a song on a recording. So simple, just having a voice that can connect with a female, and they can say, ‘This is for me.’ Trapped Under Ice said ‘bitch’ in our songs before I had time to reflect on that, before anybody ever talked with me about what that meant and that it wasn’t welcoming,” he recalls. “There’s nothing soft about creating an open platform for everybody to be a part of.”
There’s also nothing soft about writing catchy-ass punk songs that ooze fun, not bravado. That’s where Trapped Under Ice’s much anticipated third album, Heatwave, comes in, taking the band’s trademark aggressive sound off the rails into exciting and flat-out infectious new territory. Joyfully described as “a trailer park Sepultura” in the band’s press release, Heatwave finds the older, wiser, and more musically daring Trapped Under Ice jamming out like never before. Songs like the album’s title track and its lead single, “Do It,” feature copious amounts of punk energy mixed with catchy hooks and rhythms that will burrow inside your head for days. Tracks like “No Relief” and “Slow Death” deliver the pummeling riffs Trapped Under Ice built their name on, but even these tunes are imbued with the main overarching element that runs throughout Heatwave: fun.
“To try to do the heaviest record possible is just contrived at this point,” Tripp says. “There’s so many incredible, heavy bands. Like, we can’t write a record heavier than King Nine, but we can put our spin on it—and we’re fun people. We’re goofy people. We joke in person, we joke on the internet. I feel like the persona of Trapped Under Ice is so serious, because that’s how certain people felt it was best to market us at that point. But fuck it, we don’t really have to market; we’ll just be ourselves and people fuck with us.”
“Some people didn’t get the fun aspect of our press release or the feeling of the record at this point, and that’s cool,” he says nonchalantly. “If you don’t like fun, I ain’t sweating you. I just really love going in a different direction than people expect and like ruffling some people’s feathers. Some people had an immediate positive reaction to it, and others were like, ‘Fuck, this isn’t Trapped Under Ice.’ But who are you to tell me what Trapped Under Ice is, man? You don’t fucking know. There are so many dynamics to Trapped Under Ice. Trapped is and can be so many things, and I never want to stop creating more opportunities for it to be something else. The next record could be something completely different. I never want to do the same thing. I never want to do something that’s easy to digest.”
“In punk rock music, the things that stick with me and mean the most to me were all offensive the first time I heard them. Punk is supposed to be provocative and controversial. If it’s not that, then you’re fucking up.”
Walk The Plank | Interview with Ian Crocker, Alex Reimer, and Tim Bean | By Hutch
D.C.’s Walk The Plank have an EP—2012’s Community 7”—a full-length—2015’s Perseverancia—and six splits under their studded belts. While those releases were impressive, Cemetery Vacation—their sophomore LP, released in May via Say-10 Records—finds the band honed and pissed. The jilting tension of frantic chords accompanied by coarse vocals exorcise emotion and reticence on this hardcore punk gem.
Guitarist Alex Reimer emphasizes the band’s obvious focus and growth on Cemetery Vacation and notes, “I think we wanted to have a little more variety on this record too. If you don’t [add variety], I feel like the message and purpose of the record gets lost a little bit. The ups and downs of our daily lives are complex and ever-changing. We wanted to express that musically. We wanted to make a cohesive album, not just a collection of songs.”
Vocalist Ian Crocker adds, “We hope the diverse nature of the content reflects the things we go through day-to-day, whether good or bad.”
Walk The Plank just wrapped their June East Coast tour. “My favorite show was Boston, because we saw a lot of family and friends we haven’t seen in a while,” Crocker says. “The show got rowdy, just how we like it. The promoters put together a hell of a show with some great bands.”
Reimer cites New Jersey’s Nowhere Else Fest as his favorite stop. “It was like a punk rock summer camp,” he recalls. “Pool, waterslides, camping, and beer. It was a blast, especially since we ran into our buds, Jukebox Romantics and OC45, while we were there.”
Bassist Tim Bean adds, “Yeah, some of the shows got pretty nuts. Drunk punks at that show in New Jersey lighting fireworks in the pit is definitely a highlight.”
Walk The Plank’s calendar is full for 2017. Reimer elaborates that they will be “hitting the road some more! We head to Europe at the end of July […] through August. We’ll get back and play a few shows here on the East Coast—including a big one in New York with Iron Chic and Two Man Advantage—before heading to Mexico in September. Then, Central America and a tour down to FEST in October. We may have a new release out by the end of the year too.”
Purchase Cemetery Vacation here.
You can grab the Trapped Under Ice cover issue w/ exclusive flexi by clicking the image below.
