I got to know Alexis and the DIY Straight & Alert label/mailorder, and recently zine, when this French guy befriended me on fb and started sending press-releases about the stuff he was putting out through his own label (rather old-schoolish East Coast NY HC stuff indeed including his old band Raw Justice) and then at some point, it was in 2014, like out of a hat-trick I've learned about this new band that named themselves HARM DONE; first thing that caught my attention was the grim blackened imagery of cover artwork and the German Gothic lettering they did choose for their band moniker. What these guys play? Old-school NYC hardcore? Straightedge hardcore? Well, as soon as I listened to their music I understood they were totally about playing some straight-forward, obnoxious, obscure blend of hardcore and everything in between from there to death metal.
HARM DONE is the new band Alexis plays in and their music, including the debut full-length “Abuse/Abused”, has been released on Straight & Alert.
The four-some is really active as far as playing live goes and is currently on their Spring 2016 Euro tour (the second leg of the tour is gonna kick off on June the 1st to wrap up on 14th) that saw them play also a string of dates in Italy, one of these being the Venezia Hardcore Fest 2016.
I have emailed Alexis a bunch of questions to let him talk more in depth about HARM DONE. Here you go...
gan: Hey Alexis how's all in life?
Hey mate, life couldn't be better these days. I'm touring a lot with Harm Done, my label and mailorder Straight & Alert records is going pretty well, summer is coming soon. All good so far for 2016.
gan: I know you guys are still on the road or just back from Southern Europe jaunt titled in your flyer “Blasting In The South”. What you can tell about this tour? Any places you have been particularly happy to have played at?
This tour was the very first one with the new line-up so it was a good way to get to know each other more in depth, and strengthen our links inside the band. It's been a bit hard since I caught the flu in the middle of the tour but besides that it was great. We spent some quality time under the sun and played a couple sick places. What comes to my mind now are Murcia, Sevilla or Lisbon. Spain and Portugal are two beautiful countries with amazing landscapes. There was so many times on the road we were all like "whooaa look at the landscape!". It really helped not to get bored while we were driving.
gan: I mentioned flyers, something I believe to be a powerful and attention-grabbing tool aimed to inform the kids on tour schedules but at the same time a unique art form that the DIY underground punk / metal music, brought to levels of creativity of its own. What your view about flyers, their importance and the great work bands often put behind them?
I'm sure a sick and good looking flyer definitely help to get some attention on a tour / show. In general I think the whole imagery / artworks of a bands is something to think about meticulously when you put out a record; T-shirts or any piece of art related to the band because it can really help to define the sound and get the whole idea behind the band with just a glance.
gan: For those not in the know, can you offer up a low-down on HARM DONE? Where you from, who's in it and any details you feel worth sharing with our readers.
Harm Done is a metalic Hardcore / Powerviolence / Call-it-whatever-you-want band formed in Nantes, western France in 2013. It started as a side projet of Raw Justice (R.I.P) and Regarde Les Hommes Tomber. Our original bass player and drummer who are in Regarde Les Hommes Tomber didn't have time to keep playing in both bands so they decided to quit around summer 2015 and we now have Benou from Direwolves and Corentin from Souvenirs on bass and drums. So far we recorded a debut 7-track 7", a promo tape featuring a pretty cool (in my opinion) SSD cover and the new LP "Abuse / Abused" we just put out. I put out these 3 releases on my own label Straight & Alert.
To be honest we didn't really know where we were going when we started the band because none of us was / is really into powerviolence or the kind of hardcore we are playing. We just all loved Nails and Sex Prisoner. But we couldn't be happier about how it turned out!
We have so many cool plans in the pipeline. Going on tour again tomorrow (April 1st) for a week and two other tours planed for spring/summer, an Ireland weekender and another sick tour on another continent later this year we'll let everyone know about when it'll be about time !
gan: In the review I wrote for your debut full-length “Abuse / Abused”, trying to give heads up as far as your sound goes, I did use these words «straight-forward uncompromising, crushing and noxious blend of hardcore meets grindcore meets death metal meets d-beat meets powerviolence». In other reviews the term powerviolence reoccurs a lot. I know tags suck but, you know, sometime they come handy for a real newby. How would you describe your sound, perhaps cross-referring it to your personal influences?
Hey mate, life couldn't be better these days. I'm touring a lot with Harm Done, my label and mailorder Straight & Alert records is going pretty well, summer is coming soon. All good so far for 2016.
gan: I know you guys are still on the road or just back from Southern Europe jaunt titled in your flyer “Blasting In The South”. What you can tell about this tour? Any places you have been particularly happy to have played at?
This tour was the very first one with the new line-up so it was a good way to get to know each other more in depth, and strengthen our links inside the band. It's been a bit hard since I caught the flu in the middle of the tour but besides that it was great. We spent some quality time under the sun and played a couple sick places. What comes to my mind now are Murcia, Sevilla or Lisbon. Spain and Portugal are two beautiful countries with amazing landscapes. There was so many times on the road we were all like "whooaa look at the landscape!". It really helped not to get bored while we were driving.
gan: I mentioned flyers, something I believe to be a powerful and attention-grabbing tool aimed to inform the kids on tour schedules but at the same time a unique art form that the DIY underground punk / metal music, brought to levels of creativity of its own. What your view about flyers, their importance and the great work bands often put behind them?
I'm sure a sick and good looking flyer definitely help to get some attention on a tour / show. In general I think the whole imagery / artworks of a bands is something to think about meticulously when you put out a record; T-shirts or any piece of art related to the band because it can really help to define the sound and get the whole idea behind the band with just a glance.
gan: For those not in the know, can you offer up a low-down on HARM DONE? Where you from, who's in it and any details you feel worth sharing with our readers.
Harm Done is a metalic Hardcore / Powerviolence / Call-it-whatever-you-want band formed in Nantes, western France in 2013. It started as a side projet of Raw Justice (R.I.P) and Regarde Les Hommes Tomber. Our original bass player and drummer who are in Regarde Les Hommes Tomber didn't have time to keep playing in both bands so they decided to quit around summer 2015 and we now have Benou from Direwolves and Corentin from Souvenirs on bass and drums. So far we recorded a debut 7-track 7", a promo tape featuring a pretty cool (in my opinion) SSD cover and the new LP "Abuse / Abused" we just put out. I put out these 3 releases on my own label Straight & Alert.
To be honest we didn't really know where we were going when we started the band because none of us was / is really into powerviolence or the kind of hardcore we are playing. We just all loved Nails and Sex Prisoner. But we couldn't be happier about how it turned out!
We have so many cool plans in the pipeline. Going on tour again tomorrow (April 1st) for a week and two other tours planed for spring/summer, an Ireland weekender and another sick tour on another continent later this year we'll let everyone know about when it'll be about time !
gan: In the review I wrote for your debut full-length “Abuse / Abused”, trying to give heads up as far as your sound goes, I did use these words «straight-forward uncompromising, crushing and noxious blend of hardcore meets grindcore meets death metal meets d-beat meets powerviolence». In other reviews the term powerviolence reoccurs a lot. I know tags suck but, you know, sometime they come handy for a real newby. How would you describe your sound, perhaps cross-referring it to your personal influences?
Like I said before we don't even really know what our sound could be labeled as. We often write Powerviolence / Hardcore because we have to choose one but people who are really into Powerviolence often told us we were not. We're fine with that, we don't pretend to be stuck into one music style because we all came/come from different scenes with our own influences. As far as I'm concerned I'm a huge Youth Crew/Boston Hardcore fan, when our original drummer is a diehard Death Metal lover so the gap is pretty big! I would say we built up our sound taking elements in from fast Hardcore Punk (Infest), Old school Death Metal (Morbid Angel), a twist of Grindcore (Napalm Death) and current bands such as Nails, Soul Search or Sex Prisoner. But your description used in the review is pretty accurate to me, even though it's a bit long to write or say, that's more or less what fits the best to describe Harm Done.
gan: Based on the reviews I saw you re-posted on fb it seems like this record has got a very good reception and only positive feed-backs thus far. How do you feel about it? Did you manage to shape it up as you initially wanted to?
That's true, fortunately we only received good feedbacks even from people we were expecting some criticisms so we are stoked about this. It's such a great feeling when people tell you good words about something we've been working hard on. Actually, we are stoked about how the new album turned out but we didn't really have a clue about how it would sound like when we started to record it because we have some songs that were written almost 2 years ago and some just finalized a few weeks before we hit the studio. We really wanted to have at least 16/17 mins of sound to be able to release an LP and it wouldn't let everyone fell it's too short. So we wrote kind a lot of songs in a short time and we didn't have much perspective on them so we were a bit anxious when we started to record. To only thing we were sure about is we wanted the record to be a big block of dirty/violent songs, with no breaks between songs, and I'm almost sure we managed to do that !
gan: Let's talk about your artworks, that of “Abuse / Abused” and those of previous releases, and imagery behind them. It takes back to that grim, blackened and deadly historical period that has been the Medieval inquisition. How did you get into these arts in the first place and the use of Gothic font (that saw the light of the day back in the 12th century) for your monicker? More than one band using it as of late...
The font choice as been a BIG issue in the band when we started, we fought a lot haha. We tried several options that we didn't really like so we ended choosing the obvious / easy one, the Gothic one. Not very original as, like you said, so many bands use this font nowadays but we like the way "Harm Done" looked with that font so we said "fuck it, let's go with this one". Concerning artworks, actually our drummer came up with the cover of our debut EP (Hanging Witches). He had this image on his computer since a long time and he always had wanted to use it for one of his bands, so he just came up with it and we loved it. It's supposed to represent witches that have been judged and hung even though no one really knew if they were guilty or not, so we thought it was fitting good with the whole idea behind the band's name. Guilty or not, it's too late, harm as been done.
Concerning the new LP I was looking for some ideas for an etching online when I found this one and loved it in a heartbeat. We didn't really plan to keep going with the hanging people imagery but afterwards we thought it was maybe a good idea to keep some kind of logic in our artworks. Moreover this etching as been done by a French, Jacques Callot.
gan: Since the very first time I read this I liked you mentioning the famed distortion pedal HM2 you did pick out as your weapon to achieve that low-end guitar sound that characterizes your offering. If I close my eyes and fully immerse myself in your music it really seems like I'm blasting some Goteborg's bands recorded in the renowned Sunlight studios. How did it all come together? You're not of a fan of Entombed and Swedish death metal, right?
gan: That's our guitar player's responsibility! As far as I can remember he loved the Entombed sound and all these bands using HM2 (Black Breath, Black Mask etc...). After a few practice when we started we really tried to work on a guitar and bass sound that would fit our songs. Since Romain (our guitar player) is a gear nerd he spent a lot of time online trying to look for the best gear to use to match the kind of sound we wanted to have. He may have changed his head amplifier about 3 times before finding the right one ahaha... So yeah, we can say we are directly influenced in our gear choices buy the Entombed/Swedish death metal.
gan: Alexis I know that you're a busy dude and besides playing in Harm Done you've got some other projects going like your other band Raw Justice, your record label named Straight & Alert and the newborn fanzine Straight & Alert, which saw the first number out last November 2015. How do you manage to keep up with everything and perhaps have a side-life? What are some of things that keep you going?
At the moment I'm mainly focused on Harm Done and the label/mailorder. Raw Justice broke up in June 2015 (and so my right shoulder did at the show!). I have a side project with Harm Done / Raw Justice members called Suture but it's on standby right now since we are all busy with other bands. We should record a demo tape soon though. Expect some The Flex/Boston Strangler influenced hardcore. The fanzine was my way to keep my days busy last summer after I broke my shoulder last year and couldn't do sports, music or anything using my right arm. I'm working on a 2nd issue but I have way less time now and the bands are super slow to answer interviews for this issue so I'm not even sure I'll be able to put it out, it's a bummer but I'll see what's up when I have more free time.
It's sometimes hard to keep up with everything at the same time but running Straight & Alert is my main an only "job" so I have all my days to work on these things. I do not count my hours, work late at night, on the road while we are touring but I love what I do so it's all good! I do manage to have a side life, spending time with my girlfriend or friends, going to shows, doing sports / skateboarding but I'm always working at some time in the day, answering to emails on my phone or bringing my laptop to work in the car or at friend's places, I have to admit I'm kind of a workaholic ahah...
gan: You guys hail from Nantes, France. How's your local scene like? It is all about Harm Done, Raw Justice and Straight & Alert?
Sorry to bring the "it was better before" cliché here but the scene got weird here now. There is actually several scenes into the Hardcore/Punk scene here. Some people go to some specific shows booked by some promoters and some other persons to other shows etc..., we can't say we have a strong united scene at the moment. Like I said Raw Justice is dead, and with Harm Done we don't play that often in Nantes because we don't want people to get bored seeing us. Unfortunately, there is not many Hardcore bands at the moment in Nantes. You know how it is, ups and downs. I'd say it's a down now and I'm afraid the last "up" was too long ago. I've been to more Doom/Black Metal shows in the last few months than Hardcore shows ! Not that there is none here, there is hardcore/punk shows almost every week, but just not bands that get me stoked.
gan: Do you know any Italian bands and are there any you like?
I have to admit I'm not well aware of what's going on in Italy these days. I know when I first got into hardcore I love 2 bands that were Indigesti and Sottopressione. Oh, and my friend Alessio from Assurd records is doing great stuff with the label, if you don't know them, check them out! Cool bands I like from Italy these days are Chains, Upward or Ragecage!
gan: Okay Alexis, that's really it for me. Thanks a bunch for taking some time out off your busy life to answer our questions. Anything you wanna add?
Thanks for the interview and sorry it took me so long to get back to you! I'll finish by saying the exact same thing I always say: Kids, DO SOMETHING! Start a band, a label, a fanzine, book shows etc... We are lucky enough to have something (the hardcore punk scene) that is run by us for us. So let's go, don't wait for someone else to do something for it/you, just start something and keep yourselves busy.
Listen here to Abuse/Abused http://harmdone.bandcamp.com/album/abuse-abused
Watch the live video shot at Venezia Hardcore Fest 2016 https://www.facebook.com/harmdonehc/videos/607620989396352/
Check: www.facebook.com/harmdonehc
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