Nothing about Regional Justice Center has ever been easy.
Just the music itself isn’t easy. RJC is among the hardest hitting bands out there, playing songs with ferocity and unbridled rage seeping through every pore. It can only be described as sonic violence.
Then there’s the subject matter: Regional Justice Center writes about the tragedy of familial incarceration—the personal and interpersonal tragedies it brings. The band’s latest effort, Freedom Sweet Freedom, out Sept 20 on Closed Casket Activities, tackles these themes with startling intensity, even for the band who wrote “Dust Off.”
Regional Justice Center was itself born out of hardship. Band-founder and longtime vocalist Ian Shelton started RJC in 2016 as a means to process the arrest and incarceration of his younger brother, Max Hellesto. Each of the prior two albums have dealt with a different theme under this umbrella, starting with the band’s debut album, 2018’s World of Inconvenience. The album focused on a life interrupted by incarceration. The 2020 follow up, Crime and Punishment, examined how difficult it can be to break cycles of hurt and addiction once they have started. Freedom Sweet Freedom, the third in this trilogy, reflects on these themes from a new point of view—the point of view of Hellesto himself, who was released in 2022.
His voice isn’t entirely new—He has been heard frequently in the RJC catalog, but only in the form of Securas jail calls. The company administers for-pay calls inside of correctional facilities throughout the country. Though there are no jail calls on this newest album, the band still found a way to include the company in its liner notes for Freedom Sweet Freedom: “Fuck Securas Technologies,” reads the last line in the album’s credits. This has particular punch given Hellesto’s release.
The success of RJC wasn’t something Hellesto completely grasped while he was incarcerated.
“Max really didn’t realize that the band had an audience,” Shelton says. “He only has the perspective of what he’s hearing on the phone with me.”
Hellesto says he heard the music when he could by buying the songs and talking with Shelton. He liked what he heard but didn’t have much perspective beyond that. He started to get a sense of the band’s reach and success after getting out of prison. “I called him, I was like, ‘I had no fucking idea,’” he laughs.
Shelton says Hellesto was always meant to be in the band. With his addition, Regional Justice Center has been fully realized. Shelton abdicated the role of singer, passing the mic to his brother who will sing live nearly all the band’s songs from past to present. The title track makes this lineup change known right away—Hellesto proclaims “freedom” with an unsettling shriek during the album’s eponymous opener. The album never stops and never lets up for 13 minutes.
Hellesto was released from prison in 2022 and said he needed the time between then and recording to acclimate and sort his thoughts. He says the album he would have written then is not what he has written with Freedom Sweet Freedom.
“My mind was just so scattered at the time,” he says. “A lot of the stuff I wrote—I think I just found a better way to say it than I would have before.” Hellesto says he felt like a “wildfire” when he came home.
On “Unnerving,” Hellesto reflects on the struggle of reintegration. “This shit doesn’t feel how it’s supposed to. Is this what I waited for,” he writes. He continues this reflection on “Rewired.” “Trapped, enclosed, brain rewired, marked by numbers, it’s stuck with me.”
Hellesto and Shelton said being so open about their family’s story with addiction and incarceration has been a mixed bag. Some people are not polite about how they approach the two to talk about these hardest parts of their lives. But the majority of interactions the brothers say have been positive.
Ian has previously said there was some level of guilt using their stories in the band and finding success. He struggles with bringing people into his brother’s life this way. This is something that hasn’t entirely gone away, but Shelton says this hasn’t changed how they approach writing for the band.
“The hard part is you can’t hide from it either way,” he says. Hellesto agrees.
Shelton says this kind of honesty is engrained in their influences.
“I think all the art and things we love embrace the flaws and embrace the difficult pasts,” he says.
While the topic of incarceration and the damage it causes is by no means easy to talk about, Hellesto says it’s been a means of relating to people. Ian says he experienced something similar prior to Hellesto’s release.
“People would ask me about Max when he was locked up. People would share their stories,” he says. With RJC, Shelton says they have planted a “flag for fucked people” and this wouldn’t be possible without Hellesto’s story being at the fore. “We wouldn’t be able to explore that in the same way without Max’s story on display.”
For his piece, Hellesto says while some interactions are not positive, he has enjoyed connecting with people who have this shared experience. It’s not something he feels like he needs to recoil from.
“It’s a part of my life,” he says. This has built a community, in a sense, within their fan base and allows some to connect to the band and its songs even further.
Hellesto doesn’t have quite the punk rock pedigree as Shelton. Shelton said he took his brother to hardcore shows when they were younger, but the music didn’t really grab Hellesto. He and Shelton said hardcore at this time was sterile and full of grandstanding and sermonizing and it didn’t do much for Hellesto.
“I wasn’t interested in a guy in his mid-30’s telling me how to live,” he says.
Regional Justice Center has a message but it’s not as dry or shallow as the preached politics often found on hardcore stages. Shelton says music is “political in that it’s referential.” But with RJC it’s all personal, which is what makes it relatable.
“We grew up in a fucked-up situation. We view it as our responsibility to make it work for us,” Shelton says.
With Freedom Sweet Freedom the two sought to write a “hyper aggressive, catchy record.” Shelton says his brother elevated his vocal parts on the album because of his vocal pocket—he finds places to sing in a different way than Shelton does.
Shelton and Hellesto are living in the moment with Regional Justice Center. They hope to tour and bring Freedom Sweet Freedom to as many as they can but as for what the future of the band holds, neither would commit. Neither’s artistic lives hinge on RJC—Shelton has Militarie Gun and Hellesto has his hip-hop project Vatican Voss. Shelton says if the band can’t top Freedom Sweet Freedom then it may very well be the last RJC album.
But neither seemed at a loss for words, so hopefully Freedom Sweet Freedom is the start of something. Not the end.
Freedom Sweet Freedom is out on Friday, and you can preorder it from Closed Casket Activities. Follow Regional Justice Center on Twitter for future updates.
Photo courtesy of Taylor Jones
