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The Suicide Machines.
Undertaking their first-ever tour of Australia, The Suicide
Machines are an American punk band who formed in 1991 and have
been touring fulltime since 1995. Within that same period, they
have also put out six records, the latest of which is the just-released
'War Profiteering Is Killing Us All.' The group hail from Detroit,
a city which guitarist Dan Lukacinsky assures me isn't nearly
as rundown as it's often portrayed: as it was, for example,
in the movie '8 Mile'.
"That's kind of a misconception about Detroit," he informs me. "Incidentally, I live right off 8 Mile myself; it's one block away from my house! It runs all the way through the suburbs; it's like the northern border of the actual Detroit city area. Anyway, people often get the impression that the city is really rundown, but the suburbs here are totally like those anywhere else. I mean there are people here that have money, and people that don't. In general, though, I would say that it's a very blue-collar town, very working class. We kind of have a liberal vibe around here."
The Suicide Machines produced their last two albums with Bill Stevenson, a man well-known within punk circles for his work with seminal punk outfits Black Flag and The Descendants. "Bill's kind of like a punk rock icon," Lukacinsky says. "He's been around since the '70s when he was a teenager playing in punk rock bands. It seems like everybody knows who he is. We're really excited to have been able to work with him a couple of times because he really understands what we're doing, and in the end, I think that it's very, very important to work with the right people, in every aspect of your career. Especially if you're doing punk, because most people on major labels don't have a fucking clue what punk rock bands are all about or what they're trying to do. Bill definitely understands what's up, though."
One track from the new album that stuck in my mind is Junk, which I surmise is about heroin. "Oh yeah, absolutely; that's what that song's about," Lukacinsky affirms. "That song and the one before it, Ghosts On Sunset Blvd, are about a couple of very good friends that have died from heroin overdoses. It's not a huge problem in the United States right now - there are a lot of people doing it, but it's not in epidemic proportions - but anybody who knows anything about heroin addiction knows that it's a very hard addiction to get away from for any period of time. Even if they're lucky enough to get off it for a short amount of time, a lot of people who use it get back onto it; a lot of people end up killing themselves eventually in one way or another on that drug. We've seen it around us, and we decided to write this song about it."
Another song with an interesting story behind it (not to mention a rather cryptic title) is 17% 18 to 25. "That's a very straightforward song about the really pathetic voter turnout for the last presidential election of people between the ages of 18 and 25", Lukacinsky tells me. "Despite all the issues that were going on, there were still only 17% of people in that age group who actually showed up to vote. I think that's pathetic, especially since people of that age really should care about things more than anybody because it's their future; they're the ones that are going to be left with this vast mess that the Bush administration is creating right now."
The band's extensive experience touring formed the basis for another song on the album,Twelve Years On Tour And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt. "There are a lot of bands like us that have been around for a long time, and do all of our own shit," says Lukacinsky.
"We do all of our own stuff everywhere we go, and we do it because we love doing it. It's certainly not because we make a lot of money off of it, which is what the song is kind of talking about. It's got a fairly comical title, but it's a very serious song. I'd like to see more bands doing that: being honest about what they're doing rather than worrying about having ten people working for them. Because I find that when people in general - and not just people in bands - find themselves in a privileged situation after they've come from nothing, they quickly forget where they came from. Besides, in my opinion, it's very hard to create art of any kind when you're in a privileged situation because in order to create art, a certain amount of angst has to be there."
James Brazel
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The Suicide Machines play an all-ages show at the Enigma Bar on Fri 7 Oct with Stolen Youth, The Jerks and The Brews. 'War Profiteering Is Killing Us All' is out now on SideOneDummy/Stomp.
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