Chicago’s Knuckle Puck has been steadily making a name for themselves for close to 10 years now. Year after year, the group has proven that they have what it takes between electrifying music and adapting when necessary to the crazy little thing we call life. Almost three years into the global pandemic and fresh into the hopeful rebirth of the scene this year, Knuckle Puck is at it again releasing their newest EP “Disposable Life,” out now via Wax Bodega. They are also preparing for a couple runs with the legends in Hot Mulligan. As much as we are trying to get life “back to normal,” it’s now time to realize this is the new normal. We sat down with vocalist Joe Taylor to learn more.
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You’ve got just under 12 hours until the EP drops. Tell me about it; how are you guys feeling?
Very excited! We practiced and we played three of the new songs [preparing for the] upcoming tour and it was just a really good vibe. In the past, if I’m writing a song, I have it and write it until it’s done and then bring it to everybody, but we were jamming these ideas out. It happened a little bit more organically, so when we play them together now, it’s like, yeah, we definitely wrote these together in a cool way you know?
I noticed this one was outside of the label; was it DIY?
[We are treating this like a] reboot of the band because we’re off the label and we were [thinking] ‘let’s just do a four song EP like our first EP’, or our first the four songs just being ‘let’s reboot the band. This is that point, but at a different point in time, if that makes sense.
“Disposable Life” is described as more of a throwback album and like you mentioned, it does kind of resemble one of your earlier EPs. Did you plan it that way or did it just happen organically?
It definitely was organic. For the song Levitate, for instance. I wanted to write a song that sounds like what you would have heard in the 2011, 2012 era. [Those were] the early points of our band so, if I can take all of the knowledge we’ve gained with songwriting and just throw it back to [what] I would have wanted to write back.
It’s throwing a fresh perspective on the past. If you know what I mean. I also saw there was an overall theme of every day and moment has meaning and every life has value. Are you able to expand on that?
I think collective people have a tendency of sitting around physically, mentally, whatever it is, and there’s things you want to do; there’s things you want to experience. I think the pandemic has woken a lot of people up to treating every moment with purpose; if you’re with family or with friends or you’re just in a moment it’s good to really be in that moment because it’s not just big things that make your life great. The pandemic presents challenges and I kind of glossed over that because I feel like [it] also gave us a lot of time to think about a lot of things and do a lot of work on ourselves.
How are you guys handling everything as far as the pandemic goes with tour? I know it’s a huge shift with the way live music used to be. How has that affected you and the scene?
It’s gonna be kind of strange because [I was] talking to Chris from Hot Mulligan about the New Found Glory tour they did and he [said], ‘dude, it’s so strict, you don’t see anybody in another band.’ Usually you share green rooms and all that. Now you don’t really hang out with the other bands socially, so there’s going to be downtime. I think it’ll be okay. I mean, I feel like there’s going to be a sort of social disconnection from the touring aspect because in the past, you’d hang out with the other bands, you’d meet people and all this stuff. Something we’ve experienced a lot is like that deprivation of social interaction.
Was there anything else that you wanted to mention?
Please check out our new EP; we’re super proud of it and if anyone’s coming out to show just be smart. Be safe.
