(by Mike Riddick)
(photography by Ryan B.)
After engaging the warm ether-like, yet contrastingly devastating-heavy sounds and grooves of HANDS, I felt compelled to check out what the band was about and how their new album “Creator” is fairing. Drummer Josh Silbernagel gave us his time with his answers below…
Metal in Fargo, ND? Please tell us about the scene out your way and what it’s like to reach success coming from the isolate north.
Yes, there is metal in Fargo, ND. And no… we don’t all have accents like in the movie (though we have been known to feed people through woodchippers from time to time…). I think that right now is one of the most exciting times for Fargo’s music scene. Even though we are a relatively small community (90,000 people) there are some really cool and diverse bands that are out touring and writing some awesome music. There are a lot of us who grew up in the scene playing in bands locally for years and are now pushing further out and representing our region nationally. Some awesome bands from our home town ranging in styles from doom to metalcore to indie to alternative to experimental-weirdness that are out doing it are; Battlefields (Translation Loss Records), The Suit, Ghost Hand Punch, Host (Init Records), Gumbi (Init Records) to mention a few. The music has never been better.
Your music carries with it a sense of warmth in spite of its heaviness. I found it to be a perplexing combination and I’m wondering what may have inspired the sound or atmosphere HANDS creates. Please elaborate, if you will… Have any other bands or music forms acted as the catalyst for your inspiration?
When we started Hands two years ago we were four guys coming together from four very diverse musical backgrounds so we didn’t really have a specific “direction” that we wanted to head. We just kind of got together and started jamming. Shane (our lead vocalist and lead guitarist) is our primary writer and at the time he was writing fairly up-tempo melodic hardcore in the vein of Life in Your Way or Means with a slightly more spaced out edge. How our sound developed into what it is now is kind of an interesting story. While recording our first E.P. called The Everlasting, we were offered a record deal by a label called Oort Records. We signed with them shortly before leaving for a summer tour last year. While on that tour Facedown Records expressed interest in working with us for our next record. When we got home and were preparing to write our album for Oort we felt that since we had a Facedown deal in the wings that we would save our “hardcore” for that record and just do a crazy, experimental, ambient concept album called “The Sounds of Earth”.
We dig Isis, Neurosis, early Hopesfall and we decided to let that side of our musical interest take the fore on that album. For my drums I drew a lot of influence from The Violet Burning’s self titled album, The Prayer Chain’s “Mercury” album, and Starflyer 59’s “Fashion Focus” album. It’s all very straight forward alternative rock drumming. I think that’s a big part of the sound on that album along with Shane’s awesome delay parts. After recording The Sounds of Earth we were so stoked on the ambient/post-rock sound that we were developing that we decided to incorporate it into our more hardcore elements. The result of this combination is our Facedown Records debut album “Creator”. It is a really cool trip of an album. It takes you all over the place musically but doesn’t lose its consistency. There are up-tempo hardcore parts, there are down tempo sludgy post-rock parts, there are breakdowns, there are really melodic singing parts and then there is Shane’s signature hardcore vocal styling. We really feel like this album represents us and all of our influences very well and we are stoked that we were able to get really creative while still maintaining the “Hands” sound… whatever that is.
There is some spoken word and a bit of singing incorporated in your debut, “Creator.” This seems to be trend among many new metal or metalcore bands. A lot of older metalheads find this lame, but you guys pull this off rather eloquently. Do you feel the recent ’singing in metal’ is a breech of all things metal or do you believe it can add some sense of creative originality, as it does in the case of your music?
As far as the spoken word stuff goes, I think that’s always been a part of metal, punk, hardcore… or rock and roll period for that matter. If Metallica can do it… it must be metal. If Black Flag can do it… it must be hardcore. But I get where you are coming from. I think the spoken word thing and the singing thing and the ridiculous over use of breakdowns can all be looked at in the same way. If you are doing it because you want something catchy solely for the purpose of “blowing up” your band or fitting the sound that is “in” then it’s lame. If you are doing it because you are an artist and you feel that the best medium for self-expression in a certain song is through spoken word, or singing, or a breakdown, or whatever than it’s great. It’s art and creative communication.
In songs like “Hope,” there is a sense of traditional rock or even gothic rock, for that matter. Is the blurring of genre divisions intentional in your music or do you simply have a diverse palette of influence within the band?
Like I said earlier, our band has some very diverse tastes musically and we love melody as well as brutality. I’ve said in other interviews that if I had to describe our “sound” it would be a blending of beauty and chaos. It’s all there in our stuff. Some of our first introductions into hard rock or metal (before we got interested in more extreme metal) were bands like Nirvana, Green Day, P.O.D., Metallica, Project 86, Blindside, Rage Against The Machine, and other more traditionally oriented hard/alternative rock stuff. We still love that music and it still influences us. Just last night we got to meet Alex Albert formerly of Project 86 while playing at a show with Demon Hunter and Living Sacrifice. Shane and I both told him how much Drawing Black Lines was like a game changing record for us. We still spin that thing in the van every tour!
The artwork for “Creator” is exceptionally accomplished. Who was the designer and what is the theme or message behind the art and/or album?
I agree whole heartedly that the album artwork for “Creator” is awesome. The photography was done by J.R. Deobold with Nitehare Photography and the artwork was done by a friend of ours named Nathaniel Navratil. He has done the artwork for all three of our albums thus far. He’s an incredible artist and we really feel like he took it to the next level with this album. The concept of his art is a general reflection of the concept of the album itself which is that of creation. We as a band look around us and we see all of the amazing things in this world. Not only the mountains, oceans, trees, rivers, sky, sun, stars, etc… but also the people, the human experience, and the way we interact with each other and with nature. As a band we have a common belief in the stories of the Bible and in the teachings of Jesus. Though we have varying opinions and interpretations of those stories and teachings, we all believe that there is a Creator and that we and the world around us are all apart of creation. We also believed that human nature has driven mankind to abuse, neglect and destroy that creation and so the world we live in is fallen and broken, though beautiful. Shane writes from that viewpoint, it’s not all positive, it’s not all negative… it’s what we see and what we experience. Its struggles and turmoil along with awe and wonder. A person… the world, is an amazing creation. The old saying “From dust we came, and to dust we shall return” comes to mind, and the images we chose are meant to capture that idea.
If I’m not mistaken, your band associates openly with Christianity. Our magazine is known for covering extreme metal acts that are particularly anti-Christian. Do you find it difficult to navigate the metal community as Christians?
As I mentioned before we as a band do share a belief in the teachings of Jesus. I don’t think we’ve had too hard of a time in the metal community because of those beliefs. Mainly because we are respectful of others’ beliefs and opinions. We are just like anyone else; we write our music from our perspective. We write songs, not sermons. We aren’t pastors or preachers. We are artists who write from our worldview which happens to be based on the teachings of Jesus. We have found a tremendous amount of peace, love, and purpose in those teachings and so they tend to come across in our songs. If someone else can get something out of them that is awesome… if not… well, I hope that they can still appreciate the art. If people want to talk about our beliefs we are totally willing, if they want to talk about what key we tune our guitars to, that’s cool too.
It seems there is a new movement of Christian metal inspired by a handful of bands. In the past, the only well known (openly) Christian bands were Living Sacrifice and Mortification. Are you fans of these two bands? Do you have any thoughts about bands like this paving the way for the introduction of Christianity in heavy metal music?
To answer your first question… the first extreme metal album I ever owned was Mortification’s “Hammer of God”, the second was Living Sacrifice’s “The Hammering Process”. Both of those bands were… still are some of our favorites. We recently got to do a couple of gigs with Living Sacrifice and we were all pretty mind blown. I’m pretty sure that LS is Shane’s favorite metal band ever and it was really cool to see him hanging out with Bruce Fitzhugh at the shows. It was one of those crazy things you dream of as a kid… except it actually happened. As far as them paving the way for us I would definitely have to say yes. Bands like Living Sacrifice, Zao, The Crucified, Vengeance Rising, Believer, Mortification, and a small handful of others really opened doors for bands like us. I think the way they did it was by being true to their art. You can say whatever you want, but if your music sucks no one will care. If your music is awesome though, it gives you a credibility that you wouldn’t otherwise have and people will accept you regardless of your message. Living Sacrifice was consistent on both points; they were true to their art and true to their beliefs. They still are for that matter. There have been lots of other bands that have played an important role too, but those guys are the fore-fathers for sure.
Do you believe that the anti-Christian themes prevalent in metal music present regular challenges to your belief? If so, how?
I can only speak for myself, but personally I don’t think that anyone else’s beliefs pose any sort of a challenge or threat to me… unless of course their belief is that I need to be fed into a woodchipper. If what I believe is true then I should be able to listen to what others have to say and to hear others’ opinions and my beliefs should stand the test. If they don’t then obviously what I believe is wrong and I need to re-assess my beliefs. I think that if Jesus Christ were to be the frontman for Hands he would spend most of his time in the scene listening to people and trying to help them find enough grace, mercy and love in their lives to allow them to get past their hang-ups. That’s a ridiculous statement however, because we all know that if Jesus Christ was the frontman for any band it would be called Lamb of God.
How do you feel the response has been to your debut? What can we expect next from HANDS?
So far literally all of the response we have had to our album has been overwhelmingly positive, from both fans and critics alike. That’s a really cool thing since when we record we just try and write what we want to hear and play.
What’s next for Hands?
Well, this has been a long tour. We did a mid-western headlining run, played a bunch of festivals, released our new album, did a west coast run with The Showdown, flew to Germany to play a festival there, came back and drove back to California for the Huntour with Demon Hunter, Living Sacrifice, and Throwdown, now we are about to head up to Tomfest in Washington, then we drive home and I get married to a hot redhead a week later! We’ve been really busy and are ready for a little break, but we’ve been having a blast and are stoked to head out and keep playing our music. So we are going to take a month or so off and see what touring opportunities open up for us. We’ll probably do a week or two of headlining stuff regionally in October and after that… who knows?!?!? Maybe we’ll finally land that tour with Metallica, U2, AC/DC, The Beatles, and the Rolling Stones we’ve wanted to put together for a while now. Eh… I think we’ll be able to find a better gig than that…
Any closing words?
Thanks for the interview. I tend to be long winded… Peace.
