What You Stand To Lose, the new album from the Las Vegas punk group Mercy Music, features a particularly warm energy, with confrontational instrumentals buoying the soaring and central singing from the band’s Brendan Scholz.
The record is a June release from Double Helix Records. With tension that’s present but woven into the overall journey instead of a cloud that hangs over everything, the rhythms feel scouring, and the band play with persistence to the point you end up imagining something like trying to clean the grime from beloved surfaces, either literally or metaphorically. Shining up an old car or making the front of an old house look newer than it is—ambitions like those sound reflected on What You Stand To Lose.
Since it’s on a relatively consistent through-line that sounds as finely tuned as that metaphor’s car sputtering back to life, you get a sense of easing into acceptance of what ails you. Quieting down and riding it out seems to be the vibe from the moderated energy level underpinning this powerful music.
The sound carries a sense of physical heft, with central components of guitar, bass, and drums that feel like they’re putting a lot at you, but it’s not overpowering. It’s more like the sound of What You Stand To Lose is a capture of watching Mercy Music perform up close and personal. Lyrically, the album moves through perspectives on tense life circumstances, examining a relatively comprehensive set of those who have a stake in the chaotic developments reflected here. The instrumentals also sometimes feature guitar solos, using the particular physicality associated with playing that instrument to expand the portrait.
Below, see what Scholz has to say about Mercy Music and What We Stand To Lose—and how he really couldn’t imagine not being involved in music.
What do you feel like has kept you coming back to making music ahead of the release of What You Stand To Lose?
I mean, as a whole, I can’t think of a time, as a child or whatever, where this wasn’t what I wanted to do, and for some reason it’s despite good or bad that comes with it. I mean, sometimes it’s really bad, and you’re wondering why the hell you’re doing this still. I don’t have it in me to stop. And with that, I mean, there is the catharsis part that comes with it too. And in a way it’s become my own form of self-therapy or getting through things, and that’s a benefit. The touring and obviously the people I choose to be in a band with or am lucky enough to be in a band with, like it all goes hand in hand. If Mercy Music stopped tomorrow or whatever, I don’t think there’s a life that I have where I’m not making music, whatever good or bad with that.
So, with the particular form of punk that Mercy Music play, was the emotional expression of it a central thing in how this record sounded?
It always is for me. And historically, with the records I’ve done, I’m always concerned if that part’s coming across, I mean the urgency or whatever emotion is being conveyed in the lyrics and stuff like that. And the counterpoint too. Like I know the melody or whatever is generally kind of poppy—a majority of the time—of what I write. So that’s always a concern for me. I was thinking the other day, like, is this hitting the point across? To have people hear what you’re feeling, it’s always a concern for me if that’s actually happening.
And then in terms of this record, like, because of what the pandemic brought on, the bass player Jarred (Cooper), he built a home studio in the middle of that, so we could still be somewhat productive. So with this record, it’s the first time we had, like, eight months when I brought the songs in to really spend a lot of time on ’em. And I think this is the most amount of work that we’ve done as a band on a batch of songs before and to make sure everything was where we wanted it. And then once we had The Blasting Room on board this time, it was doubly so to make sure that there was no room for error or question because time is money, and we didn’t want to waste any. So that’s what I can say with this record has been the most different factor with it is we really spent a lot of time on the songs themselves. And I do think listening that the feeling of everything is conveyed in it. I believe it to be a successful turnaround.
When putting together your vocals for this record, do you feel like you really dialed in to essentially personifying the emotion of the words versus, say, hitting certain notes? How did those two concerns relate?
When you’re in the vocal booth, sometimes you lose sight of that (emotion) because you’re trying to get the most in-tune performance or to the point where you forget what you’re actually singing. So that is a real thing where you need to kind of take a second and realize you need to go back to where you were at when you wrote it—and not that you’re just trying to get something that sounds good. And that happens a lot. So that’s something you have to be really aware of, I mean for me. If we do a pass multiple times or something like that, and then you’re like, I’m just trying to get it to sound as good as it can, and you’re realizing, well maybe that’s not as important as getting the emotion behind it, and then going for it with that too. I’m really hard on myself in those situations. I don’t like singing. I just always thought it was something, like, guitar players did. So that’s what I’ve done. And, yeah, that definitely did happen a lot on this record, me making sure that I wasn’t just trying to get the perfect pitch take or whatever.
Do you find it difficult, particularly with any of the new Mercy Music songs from What You Stand To Lose that you’ve performed so far, to return to the emotion captured in them night after night when touring?
At first, yeah. I mean, every record we write is based on my personal experiences. I wish I could write (My Chemical Romance’s) Welcome To The Black Parade or (Green Day’s) American Idiot. It just never came to me. It’s hard for me to write about something that’s not close to me—It doesn’t always have to be me specifically—or just people around me; it’s got to be that. I’ve got to feel something to have the patience to write about it. At first, it is always (difficult). But, I mean, as time goes on, you pulled a bandaid off. I think that it goes hand in hand with the personal healing process and me going back to the therapy aspect of this too, but then you have songs that are so old that you’re like, “I’m past this,” you know? That’s just par for the course, and it comes with it—I mean, if that’s the way you choose to write or the things you write about, but yeah, at first it is (tough).
So, thinking about the instrumentals, do you have a lot of interest in essentially big-budget stadium rock, and do you feel like that informed you musically? What You Stand To Lose occasionally seems to evoke that sort of thing.
There is a part of me that really loves that. I mean, one of my favorite bands of all time—easily in the top three—is Thin Lizzy. So I kind of carry that as a guitar player, like that’s part of me that never goes away. So you’ll get lips of that in what we do, as silly as it sounds. There are moments on this record that we dialed back because it got too cock rock-stupid, and it just doesn’t fit. Like, you’ve got to be aware of the situation you’re in to a point.
I’m not going to shit all over it because if given the opportunity, it’s not something I’d shy away from, and I’d love to be that successful, but I don’t think it would ever—not enough so to alter what we do or how I write or anything like that. But yeah, there’s definitely sides of those things that I definitely appreciate.
Do you feel particularly plugged in to what some might call the current crop of punk and hardcore and related styles, and do you feel like that’s informed your latest approaches with Mercy Music?
I mean, I kind of make it a point to—and this may sound bad, but I feel like it’s not, because people look at music or being in a band in so many different ways, but to me it’s like, one, I’m never going to be ashamed to say that I wish this was paying all my bills, which I think is the hot-button issue for a lot of people. And it’s like, people saying art shouldn’t—I’m not going to fucking say no to you paying my rent to play music every night. I don’t care. That’s awesome. That’s the dream. That’s everything. Is it going to stop me from doing it either way? No. But for lack of better words, I feel like it’s part of your job description, as someone doing this, to be aware of what’s going on.
So yeah, I do make it a point to stay as relevant as possible and also, through that, finding enjoyment in new music, which for me honestly has been more of an effort lately to find bands that I enjoy. And as you get older, you’re naturally not going to understand, you know, the shifts, and you never want to be stuck. You never want to be the old guy yelling at the tree who’s like, ‘I don’t get it.” You have to see something in it. I do really try to stay as relevant as possible and plugged into everything that’s going on around—and not just in punk or alternative, but I’ll listen to Top 40 radio because there’s a lot to be said about that too, because, I mean, there’s no point in staying stagnant and stuck in your lane. And I just think just even as a person, it’s good to have growth in yourself. But I make it a point to, because also as a person in a band, you want to see what’s going where.
So, thinking about What You Stand To Lose and where it goes, do you feel like you were hoping to move things towards a specifically positive note?
Yeah, I mean that is the end game. I know we’re the band where I’m the guy that writes about dying all the time or that shit’s fucked up, and you have a moment where you can only write so many songs about thinking about killing yourself; it gets old, and there’s got to be (more). And with this record, I know the last song is probably the most downer song on the record, which is counterpoint to the flow of the record. And it almost didn’t go on the record; it was (producer) Bill (Stevenson)’s insistence of keeping it. Because I was like, I’m not sure, but he insisted. And it just seemed like the best place was to close the record with it.
I don’t want to say, like, a full storyline here, but by the time you get to the end of the record, there’s maybe more of a sarcastic acceptance and being able to move on from where you’re from, and that maybe there is a proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, and if not, fuck it, you just keep going anyways.
I generally try to have that for everybody. Because when I write, of course I want to be to someone what someone was to me when I was at my wits’ end or when I put that song on, and I’m like, “You know, it’s gonna be alright.” Because that’s, like, the majority of my life is, that’s what music’s been for me. So I never want to just leave it completely because it’s never completely hopeless to me despite however awful I’m feeling. There’s always just a tiny–thankfully—blip of positivity somewhere. So I think throughout the record that maintains, I wouldn’t say a direct flow as far as the songs go. I think songs (work) individually more so than a direct beginning, middle, and end.
(…) It’s just like, you’re allowed to feel like shit, but please don’t throw in the towel.
So, putting the finishing touches on this, what role do you feel the production process had in bringing your overall vision to life? Can you share how that played out in terms of realizing What You Stand To Lose?
The last record we did prior to this we did in five days. And the goal for us with that was trying to capture as much of a live feel as possible in a studio environment. And I definitely think we did that with this, having Bill on board this time. I know we’ve tried to line it up the past couple records, but he is probably one of the busiest people. This time, it worked, and when you go to The Blasting Room, you kind of have an idea of what your finished product is going to be via just historically. And, I mean, I did a record with Bill when I was 19, right after I got out of high school. And so I’ve been able to maintain and stay friends with him. I’m grateful and thankful for that.
We knew kind of what the end game was going to be, just knowing some of our favorite records and stuff like that. Jarred and I, we’re huge ALL and Descendants fans—huge influence on us as players too. And I know Bill understands where I come from writing and stuff like that too, so it’s nice to have that in your corner while you’re creating something with somebody. I am trying to think of a better way to say it, but I know we’re going to have a really good finished product that bridges the gap between very produced and very clean, but still, you’re able to sense the emotion from it. And I think that’s what The Blasting Room excels at is giving you the quality while still having the edge.
Photos courtesy of Alan Snodgrass
