The energy that comes from NYC hardcore band Rebelmatic is perpetual, non-simulative. It is art reflecting life, a transference that is permanent, a swift kick in the ass. “Our stuff is not a nostalgic trip, our stuff is now,’ says vocalist Creature. While you can feel the influence of ‘80s hardcore and some of its various offshoots, that resonates as affinity, the best kind, and the group builds a direct and unique impression. “We’re not trying to rehash anything, we just play what we like. That’s why our album is so diverse. We’re not trying to remake some hardcore record from ’82, we’re not trying to remake a hip-hop album as a hardcore band; we have no path of what we do, we just do what we do. And what we’re doing is setting our own lane.”
And that would be a slick and resourceful one. The group’s newest record, Ghost In The Shadows, drops today, August 28 via Red Right Recordings. It’s an attack of variety, a soulful excursion with aggression and truth at the center of it all. Ten songs of pure expression burn into your heart, a journey through a genuine path. Punk rock has historically tackled political and societal realities, but Rebelmatic goes where few bands go: right to the heart of America’s racist construction.
“I think the thing is, punk is political,” Creature explains. “But black people have a tendency to have to negate their blackness to be into punk, you know, because there’s the fear of offending potential white people or whoever else is into punk. And that’s been the case. But for us, when we make our music it’s unapologetic, we’re not thinking about who’s not going to like it; it’s like, ‘yo, this is who likes it.’ I’m not going to not be me, if you don’t like it because it’s too funky for you; it’s not for you. If you don’t like it because I’m talking about police brutality, or if it’s too black for you, it’s not for you.”
“Insult to Injury,” the first single and first video of the record, deals with a reality that African Americans deal with on a daily basis: being chased for simply living their lives.
The Covid-19 pandemic and murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor have forced many people to confront a reality they typically shy away from. “We’re in a pandemic,” Creature says. “So you throw that with the protests and everyone is forced to deal with it. Black people have been screaming and yelling this forever. So I think yeah, white people are now forced to at least look at it and have a dialogue. Whereas before, I think it’s kind of like easy to say ‘alright that doesn’t affect me,’ but know it’s like, ‘o wow, it’s so blatant and so brazen; it’s unavoidable.”
Ghost In The Shadows has a spirit like a comet blazing in the sky. From the raging punk of “Blood and Gold,” to the transcendent “Avenger,” this is a record that fills one’s musical soul, capturing a moment in time through pure expression. Anger, love and dexterity forge a hardcore classic, a timeless piece of art that comes at a most crucial time. It’s easy to get swept away in the music—it’s that good—but listening to it and hearing the words is its praxis. “People have to check their privilege and look and see what’s going on, absolutely,” Creature relays. “This is more than just individual people that have to do the work, that have to unpack a lot of shit. This is a system that has been here long before me.”
Rebelmatic holds nothing back, a band of the present, the truth tellers of our time.
Read the whole interview with Creature below.
So I guess, just to start of with something: the song and the video “Insult to Injury,” I feel like it speaks of real experiences by real people, do you think white people might finally be getting some sort of message that will resonate. Because I mean you’ve been writing about racism, police brutality and harassment for a long time, and so have a lot of other musicians and artists, and so little has changed, so I guess, do you feel, perhaps, a little different about what’s going on?
I think the whole world is kind of, we’re in a pandemic, so you throw that with the protests, everyone is forced to deal with it. Black people have been screaming and yelling this forever, myself included and many others. I think yeah, white people are now forced to at least look at it and have a dialogue. Whereas before, I think it’s kind of like easy to say ‘alright that doesn’t affect me,’ but know it’s like, ‘o wow, it’s so blatant and so brazen; it’s unavoidable.’
So do you feel like there’s some sort of positivity going on there? Or is it just a product of the circumstances like you said?
When you say positivity, what do you mean?
I guess I mean; well maybe positivity might be the wrong word. I mean just an awareness, that maybe people when they look inside of themselves, they’re like ‘look, am I fucked up, in terms of: I haven’t spent the time, I haven’t invested the time to look into what is really going on?
Yeah, well that’s just the system. This is more than just individual people that have to do the work, that have to unpack a lot of shit. This is a system that has been here before me, this is a system that wasn’t even necessarily made for me. So people have to check their privilege and look and see what’s going on, absolutely. The most positive thing I think about it is the dialogue, people have been protesting, people have been rebelling, and unfortunately people have been continuing to die, even during this protest. People are being murdered still. You know what I mean. So social media has brought more to light, but if you want to go back to even Emmett Till, who was murdered for an accusation by a white woman, who said he whistled at her. Then you follow later on she said she made the whole thing up. So this legacy of brutality has been here longer than both of us. So, I mean, people are just forced to deal with it, I mean the dialogue is there, the music like myself, I’ve been talking about this, other people have been talking about this. And I’m here for it.
So, in terms of your life, what has music meant to you in terms of giving you inspiration and hope and energy?
I mean music is the vehicle I use to convey what I need to say. It’s cathartic; it’s spiritual, it’s fun, it’s a lot of things. I’ve been doing music most of my life. It’s my outlet, if I didn’t do music I’d probably go crazy, but I don’t think that’s no different than anybody. Most artists will tell you something similar, but for me specifically, yeah, this is my outlet, this is the way I express myself. I don’t like sit down and think about what’s happening in the world, it’s just kind of how I’m wired. The things I talk about, I talk about because these are the experiences I’ve been through; these are the ways I see things.
So what’s your writing process like in terms of: are you writing a song after you hear a beat or a after you hear a riff? Or is it more like poetry?
I mean we write together. Like “Insult to Injury,” we were just jamming and working on another song. We were practicing and I was just like ‘Yo,’ I told Alcatraz the guitarist, ‘what is that,’ he was just playing a riff that everyone knows now is “Insult to Injury.” I was like ‘what’s that,” he’s like ‘o something I’m just playing,” I was like ‘hold up, play that,’ and then I told Ramsey to hit the drums, and Karnage to hit the bass, and then we just starting jamming. It literally wrote itself. I wrote it in like, ten minutes. All the words, ten minutes, so. But there are many processes. All of our music is done organically. Sometimes I write at home, sometimes in the street. Sometimes I come up with riffs myself; sometimes they come up with them. Everyone contributes in different ways. It’s not forced. I don’t sit at home all day thinking about writing a song. I just write all the time. That’s a part of what I do. I write. I jot things down in my phone, I write in a book. But most of the times, it’s like I hear it, I write it, I might revise it later, but we’re just capturing that moment.
Right on. So when you’re writing a hip-hop song or something, it’s a little different than working with the band?
Ok, so I’m going to give you a quick synopsis. It’s like this: before I started rhyming, I was in a hardcore band when I was 15 years old. So I started out in a hardcore/punk band. I first started out listening to metal and that progressed into hardcore punk which then led me back into hip-hop, and through that I started rhyming. So through hip-hop I was in a group called Triflicts, we had a record come out in ’96. So, I’ve done solo, I’ve done a lot of touring and worked with people like MF Doom, worked with Atmosphere, worked with a lot of different people. Rebelmatic is not a Creature project, Rebelmatic is a band; I’m not like an MC with a band. We are the band. It’s not like the band is let’s get a guy who raps. I mean I started out in a hardcore band, but I can rhyme, you know what I mean. “Insult to Injury” is not rhyming you know what I mean. And you know what I’m doing with MF Doom is not what I’m doing in ‘Insult to Injury.” That’s just another thing like saying, you know, black folks you know, we’re diverse, especially in NYC, a lot of us grew up on a lot of different things. For the process of writing, it’s different parts of the brain for rhyming and listening. Rhyming there are a lot more words you know, and then for Rebelmatic it’s different. It’s more about the moment I’m in. But both of them are dealt with delicately and respectfully.
Cool, so just about a few of the songs on Ghost in the Shadows. Like “Blood and Gold,” that’s really cool, like old school NYC hardcore. I guess, what are saying in that song, because I feel like blood and gold are completely opposite in terms of physicality, so the image is really interesting, and the message becomes really intricate in terms of the visual of it?
I mean we got a video coming up of “Blood and Gold” very soon, I think that’s going to be the next single from the album. “Blood and Gold,” well that’s the same thing, Alcatraz came up with the riff, I wrote it. I heard the words, ‘I roll the streets of blood and gold,’ I heard it in my head, ‘don’t stop, get up,’ and then you know, ‘I’ve been knocked down, but I won’t fall, don’t stop, get up.’ It’s very inspirational but at the same time it’s what everybody dies for, you know. It’s like people die for gold. Or the simple metaphor, you lose blood for gold. It’s like I wrote it on a simple level, I wrote it to just to keep me motivated. For when I feel like ‘eh,’ I hear ‘don’t stop, get up,’ that makes me keep going.
That’s a hardcore mentality. Energy.
Yeah, yeah, I mean that’s the ethos. I mean we learned PMA (Positive Mental Attitude) from Bad Brains when they introduced it to hardcore. They learned it from reading Napoleon Hill. So we leaned the PMA, the DIY attitude, the punk rock ethos, you know, we learned that real young, but you know we’re hip-hop kids too, so we listen to a lot of music, we’re not just like hardcore kids you know. So it all bleeds into everything.
Yeah, the album is really varied, in terms of styles, there’s funk, and soul, and progressive elements.
What do you think of the album?
I think it’s amazing, I think it’s awesome. I’m thinking, like you were just saying, the ethos of hardcore, that song in particular “Blood and Gold” gives you energy, you can just ride that thing for a week, you know, and that’s the mark of an amazing song to me. You know, you can just pump that thing, and you know, I think the record is amazing; it’s so varied, like the last song, “Emergency Break,” in particular. So, I guess, what was the process like when you guys wrote the record, seems like, maybe it took awhile?
Nah. It didn’t. I mean every time we jam we write music. Guys are working on riffs, I’m writing all the time. Sometime my brain works to rehearsal and I write it then, sometimes guys got riffs, sometimes I have riffs, and we just put it into a box. It wrote itself, I mean we put the effort in to fine tune in, so what you hear is today, but like, all our music, we don’t even record it until we play it out. So we were performing it out for like a year. So, like there are some of our supporters that are like ‘we can’t wait to hear the album,’ and I’m like ‘you’ve been hearing it for like a year.’ So like yeah we’ve fine-tuned it, see what works. Everything we write is to perform. It’s for the live show. So, it didn’t take long to write the album, the album is probably been recorded for like a year already.
So you just went in there and slammed it out.
Yeah, I mean we literally knocked it out in a couple of hours. And then obviously you need a couple of overdubs and everything else, but we’ve been playing. I mean the process is very natural, it was very like ‘o, you know that song, check this out, o, that’s cool, I got a part for that, how about a part for this,’ and then once you come out, we shape it up and play it and see how people feel. And if we get the response we’re looking for, that’s a keeper. Of it doesn’t, we’ll go back to the drawing board, or fix it up and try again or throw it away. If our people don’t give us the response, without them it’s, I don’t have to tell them, if they don’t respond how I want them to or how we’re looking for, it’s not even worth it, you’re not going to hear it. You might see us play it live but it won’t make the record.
That’s awesome. Yeah, so in terms of how the band came together, you were friends with everybody in high school or just a few of them?
Nah, no one I went to high school with is in the band. There’s a kid I went to high school with, he’s not in the band. But we went to the same high school, but I was like, I already left, I already dropped out of school. He just wanted to play with a band since then, because I had been in other bands in high school. And he was just like ‘yo, Siddiq I want to play in a band with you,’ and I was kind of like ‘yeah, that’s crazy, because I’ve been thinking about getting back into playing with bands and stuff. He’s now in the band. My guitarist Alcatraz, we’re from the same neighborhood, Corona, Queens. So I’ve known him like a long time. Our bass player Karnage, he’s originally from the Bronx. We meet him at a show that we were doing, like we were playing a show with this other band and him and I just built a rapport. It was like he was a fan and supporter of our stuff and the opportunity came to actually bring him into the fold because it made sense, we have similar experiences, as well as influences, so that made sense. And then our drummer right now, Ramsey Jones, who’s O.D.B’s brother, you know I’ve known Ramsey for years, he’s like one of my favorite drummers in New York City period. So when the opportunity arose for him to be the drummer for us, we took advantage of it. It’s very organic; we knew each other. But me and Alcatraz, we kind of grew up together in the same neighborhood. Two of us are from Queens, one’s from the Bronx and one’s from Brooklyn. But like, we’re all born and raised in New York City. I don’t like being called a New York based band; we are a New York band.
So it’s a pretty collaborative project, like you were saying before, you guys are writing it and it’s organic, and it’s about the band.
Yeah, I mean someone might come with a riff someone might come with a whole song. I write all the lyrics, but sometimes I might come with a riff and someone will add onto it. Sometime someone might be like a got this, and I’ll be like ‘what.’ It’s a feel, you know, people just come with stuff. It’s never out mindset, we’re not like trying to rehash we just play what we like. That’s why our album is so diverse because we’re not trying to remake some hardcore record from ’82, or some year, we’re not trying to remake a hip-hop album as a hardcore band, we have no path of what we do, we just do what we do. What we’re doing is setting our own lane, it’s the people we’re inspired by, but we’re doing something completely us.
Yeah, I would say it sounds that way too. It sounds like it’s its own thing, you know there’s hardcore elements of the past, but it’s you guys and it’s totally like what you were saying, it’s just organic playing, and free, which isn’t easy.
No one’s here to deny that we listen to hardcore. Of course, I’m a hardcore kid. No one’s denying that we listen to hip-hop; the battle is everything. That’s growing up in New York, that’s the pre-gentrified New York. You’re exposed to a lot of different music, and so that comes out. And since we don’t have a tag on ourselves that makes us feel like we don’t have to stay doing one thing, we do what we like.
You think music has changed since gentrification, in terms of how the New York-centric bands sound?
Of course, of course, it has to. I mean you can grasp for something that once was, but you if you didn’t come up through that something, it’s not the same thing. You can kind of aim to do it, use the same gear, use certain words, and you might get close, but there’s a certain authenticity that might not be there. But at the same time, there’s people now making great music, even though we’re from a pre-gentrified New York, we’re still here now, and our stuff is not a nostalgic trip, our stuff is now. Our stuff is very now, this is not throwback music, I mean there are elements of obviously the past, and the future too, but it’s now, you know what I mean. The stuff we’re talking about is pertinent to now. People would think we wrote this thing during the pandemic, but we already had this album done. I mean you hear the subject we talk about and you’re like ‘o, this is cool, they kind of lock in,’ it’s like no, dude this record’s been done, from the album cover, to the title, from the songs to the words, it’s been done, it’s been mixed, mastered and done.
Yeah, I mean in terms of questions you’ve received, is that what people have been saying, like ‘whoa, it’s spot on about what’s going right now?’ But that shit’s been going on for so long.
I think the thing is to, it’s weird to have, especially in punk, people are political, punk is political, but black people have a tendency to have to negate their blackness to be into punk, you know, because there’s the fear of offending potential white people or whoever else is into punk. And that’s been the case. But for us, when we make our music it’s unapologetic, we’re not thinking about who’s not going to like it, it’s like, ‘yo, this is who likes it.’ I’m not going to not be me, if you don’t like it because it’s too funky for you; it’s not for you. If you don’t like it because I’m talking about police brutality, or if it’s too black for you, it’s not for you, I’m not here to like, I thought we were still in a democracy, I thought you could say whatever you want.
Yeah no doubt, so I guess the last one I had was, you probably talked about it earlier, but how do you remain so prolific in terms of projects, writing hip-hop songs, writing hardcore songs, is there a formula, a discipline you have to engage in every single day?
I’ve been doing music most of my life. It’s what I do. I honestly think I could be more prolific. I just do it, I don’t like sit around and think about like ‘o, I’m going to put out this song, I’m going to put out this hip-hop record,’ I just, this is what I do. I’ve got stuff right now I just recorded. I’ve got two hip-hop projects right now, like literally in two days I just did it, it’s like whatever, you know what I mean, it’s in us, it’s in me. The discipline is like: you make a lot of sacrifices; you sacrifice your life to express yourself. I mean right now it seems cool we’re doing an interview, getting interviewed by other people due to what’s going on, and I’m appreciate of it, but it’s like, it takes a tool on who you are. It is spot on right now because of the current situation, but most people don’t want to talk about this shit we’re talking about. They don’t want to talk about it.
That sucks.
It’s true. Just to delve quick: like I think I’ve said it already but just to reiterate, it’s ok to be political in punk, but if you’re talking about something black, it’s scary for people. If you say black, it’s like ‘whoa, whoa, hold up,’ it’s just changing, it’s not the same, or its anything other than what it is. And a lot of people are de-censored and think it’s weird. And then people have this thing about tokenizing black bands. It’s crazy. You know I said it in another interview, like everybody thinks every black band sounds like Bad Brains. And we love Bad Brains, but like every hardcore band sounds like Bad Brains because they’re black. I’m just saying, you know how many shows I’ve played and people are like ‘o, you know who you guys sound like,’ and I’m like ‘ok, let me see,’ and nine times out of ten it comes up. Maybe I’m saying this again and again so that when people hear this they’ll at least try and listen with a different ear, you know what I mean, and not just look at us and be like ‘o, and black guitar player it’s Bad Brains,’ what’s common is that we both blend a lot of different types of music. And they inspire us, and I love them, but we don’t sound like them, and out friends MAAFA don’t sound like us. You know, I mean The 1865 don’t sound like them, and Universal Ignore Her doesn’t sound like them. And Winter Wolf don’t sound like them. But as far as the discipline, this is what you do, right. I’m going to do this regardless of whether anyone hears this or not. I have to. It’s a part of who I am.
