This originally ran in MRR #314/July ’09. which is now out of print

Coke Bust is a Washington DC hardcore band whose music draws primarily from mid-’80s European thrash, a la Heresy and Ripcord, as well as the better corners of the youth crew genre, creating a sound that brings bands such as Scholastic Deth or Betercore to mind. As an open-minded yet firmly identified straightedge band at a time when having such ethos (or having any ethos, really) is at its most uncool, they dig deeper than the usual slogans and trappings of “straightedge hardcore,” writing songs that take on topics such as the less obvious outcomes of drug and alcohol culture, as well as the lesser-known implications of the “war on drugs,” including the US-backed aerial spraying of coca crops in South America. Their output so far includes their demo 7″ that they’d rather you pass over in favor of their Fuck Bar Culture 7″, and they are also releasing an LP titled Lines in the Sand, which will be out by the time that you read this. They’ve also planned a six-week US tour in July. Nick does vocals, Jeremy plays guitar, Jubert plays bass, and Chris spreads himself pretty thin but never slacks on his drum duties.

Interview by Dan Goetz.

MRR: How exactly did the band get together? Nick and Chris, I know you two were in Griptape a few years earlier…did Coke Bust form so you two could play in a band together again?

Chris: Nick and I did play in a band called Griptape when we were in high school. After that band broke up Nick started another band called Bail Out!, and they played for a little while but me and Nick always liked playing music together, so it was inevitable that we’d start another band.

Nick: For a time, Parsons, Chris, and I were jamming and we couldn’t find someone to play guitar, so Parsons suggested Jeremy. He was this older guy in the scene who had already been in a bunch of bands. We didn’t know him that well, but we knew that he was a nice guy and liked good music, so we asked him on a whim, and it turned out to work out great.

Jeremy: Parsons came up to me at my previous band’s last show and said that he was jamming with Nicktape and that it was going to be short, fast hardcore punk and asked if I wanted to do it. I had nothing going on so I said, “Yes, let me know when you guys want to try to get something together.” A couple of months later Parsons called me, so I showed up and we wrote three songs in one day!

MRR: How’d you find the new guy?

Nick: Well, our old bass player, Parsons, wasn’t able to play in the band anymore due to the fact that he was living in Richmond, Virginia [two hours south of DC] and I think he had a lot on his plate. So I was at a show that Jubert [the new guy] was at and he was like, “Hey man, you should let me play bass,” and he came and jammed with us. He rules. He’s still in high school, too!

Jeremy: It wasn’t working out with him, and it was pretty mutual. He wasn’t making the commute and contributing as much as he used to, so we just kind of all decided separately that it’d be best to part ways, so we found ourselves without a bass player, and someone mentioned Jubert’s name and that he was a good bass player.

Nick: And he’s straightedge too.

Jeremy: Yes, he fit the criteria.

MRR: What are some of your influences, including some of your less obvious ones? How do you go about writing songs? The first 7″ alternates between youth crew and Heresy-sounding stuff, and I can catch hints of Bail Out! and Magrudergrind, while the second 7″ has a more cohesive, fused-together sound that always struck me as a more youth crew Scholastic Deth.

Chris: I think that from the beginning, we had a general idea of what we wanted the band to sound like. We all kind of came to practice and were like, “We all like Heresy; we want to start a really fast hardcore band,” and I don’t think it was really a coincidence that the band was straightedge. I think it was all in the back of our minds when we were getting together, and I think we actively sought out other people who were straightedge to be in a band. DC has a long history of straightedge, and there really aren’t that many straightedge kids in DC, or at least when we started the band, and there’s not a “straightedge” scene in this area.

Nick: We just wanted to play fast, and we wanted to have a youth crew edge, because we all dig that shit too. Jeremy?

Jeremy: I would say from the beginning, it was in the back of everyone’s mind that we wanted to play fast. I can speak for myself with all the riffs, ideas, and songs I brought in that I think we were just kind of feeling each other out, so I don’t feel that the first record had a terribly cohesive sound, whereas I know on Fuck Bar Culture we kind of knew what we wanted to do. We’d already done a tour or two together, so we were more comfortable playing and it just came out that way. It needed to be a little more pissed sounding than the last record, so we just upped the ante on ourselves.

Chris: Can I also note that our first 7″ was supposed to stay a demo. We made like 100 CD-Rs with crappy folded inserts for our first few shows, and we made some tapes, and it was supposed to stay like that, but Bobby Egger from Headcount Records insisted that the demo go on 7″. I think that was the stupidest idea ever. [laughter] But we still love you Bobby!

Nick: Those demos we made for our first show were some straight-up Crayola-lookin’ joints.

MRR: That makes sense. I’ve noticed in listening to the Cycle of Violence songs [that would eventually be for the LP], it almost seems like you’re expanding on both parts, like it’s split apart again, but the songwriting is definitely improved in both the youth crew parts and the thrashier parts.

Nick: Yeah, that shit is cool.

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