Double Dagger

You can draw a nuanced line from Double Dagger’s atypical art punk to the fact that two-thirds of the Baltimore band runs a graphic-design studio known for its clean and witty inventions, but really, the first thing you need to know is this: Double Dagger’s visuals are fantastic. That they look like pasty everymen puts them in a string of nerdy post-hardcore groups stretching from Frodus to Lightning Bolt—and like those bands, Double Dagger juxtaposes its members’ ostensible plainness with destructive, unpredictable live sets. (Stand close to the stage, and expect to make physical contact with frontman Nolen Strals.) The songs include two-minute ragers, lengthy and elliptical dirges, and way more intellectual wankery than an outfit with no guitarist should be able to get away with. It’s too bad this tour is Double Dagger’s last: This band isn’t meant to be remembered through the inevitable posthumous releases. 8 p.m. at Black Cat Backstage. $10. (Jonathan L. Fischer)

MUSIC

British electronic musician Mark Fell will perform pieces from his album Multistability at Artisphere tonight. Fell follows local sound artist Richard Chartier, who will focus on excerpts from A Field for Mixing, his recent album of field recordings. 8 p.m. $15 (donations welcome).

City Paper contributor Steve Kiviat recommends tonight's Baaba Maal concert at Birchmere, which he predicts will be very different from the Senegalese singer's last show in town.

And on the opposite end of the spectrum, there's Hanson at State Theatre. 8 p.m. $30-$35.

BOOKS

New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson is not a pushover, normally. But when it comes to dogs, she is their doting servant. Hear all about it tonight when Abramson reads from her book, The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout, at Politics & Prose. 7 p.m.  Free.

David M. Kennedy is known for his work on the Boston Gun Project, an anti-crime initiative that took an alternative approach to preventing gun violence. Tonight he discusses his book Don't Shoot: One Man, A Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America at Busboys & Poets' 5th & K location. 6:30 p.m. Free.

Dept. of Wild Flag: On The New York Times' ArtsBeat blog, Wild Flag gets an early dose of the Times' tweet-sourced CMJ Music Marathon coverage. Basically it's a writeup from a Times music critic—Jon Caramanica in this case—and a single tweet plucked from the masses, neither of which mentioned Mary Timony.

Exit Interview: On Click Track, David Malitz gives Double Dagger—who are done after tonight's show at the Black Cat—a loving sendoff. Arts Desk's Leor Galil also interviewed the noisy Baltimore trio yesterday.

Today on Arts Desk: All sorts of stuff! Gallery openings! The Enterprise! Edie Sedgwick in Leipzig, Germany! Closing thoughts on Shear Madness!

Double Dagger, from left: Strals, Willen, Bowen

Last month Baltimore post-punk trio Double Dagger announced it was breaking up after a little more than nine years together. The six-paragraph note on the band's site sums up the bittersweet nature of Double Dagger's demise, which is taking place simply because, in their words, it's just time.

Followers of vocalist Nolen Strals, bassist Bruce Willen, and drummer Denny Bowen still might think their split is premature: Double Dagger has morphed its calamitously cathartic punk-rock riot into something positively pop-ready over the course of several releases through last year's Masks EP. Throughout the band's evolution, it's lured fans with chaotic live shows, in which Strals spends most of the show on the floor, screaming inches away from concertgoers' faces, wriggling on the ground, and jumping all over the place while Willen and Bowen kick out some thundering, bombastic punk. It's an act rarely seen and hard to beat.

But Double Dagger has chosen to go out in style, building an eight-date minitour that ends with one final hometown blowout on Friday in Baltimore. Before setting out, Strals and Bowen took some time to discuss the timing of the breakup, their posthumous work, and the band's relationship with D.C.

Washington City Paper: The note you left on your website explaining why you're breaking up you mentioned that a big portion of it was timing. Why is now the right time?

Nolen Strals: Well, the band is still popular, we still like the music, and I think we would rather stop when other people still like it, more importantly when we still like it, then have it sort of drag on. The band is still something that we choose to do and I don't think we want to keep going if it felt like an obligation.

WCP: You have other songs you're recording, too. Have you decided what you're going to do with them?

NS: It's probably gonna be a handful of songs, so we're not sure about the format. It might just be a seven inch. We think we know who's going to put it out, but we're not sure, we just haven't had time to have a formal talk about it. We're going to record that in November. We have this friend who works in film, and he said he wants to come with us to tape our last string of shows. He wants to make a short little documentary. That was his idea. We're not really sure how it's going to come out or who will put it out just because that idea it just came together sort of last-minute, just really spotaneously. So hopefully there will be the last record and possibly a little documentary, too. You're the only person I've told that!

WCP: As far as the final tour, you mentioned that these are your favorite places to play in. Why these cities?

NS: Well, not to knock Detroit, but we've only played there once and we're only playing there because it gets us to Chicago. We've always had a great time in Chicago and the other cities, and those are the cities where we seem to have the strongest fanbase, if you want to use that word. It just made sense, if we were only going to play a handful of these kind of shows, they should be places that we really like, but also that has a good audience. There are a lot of shows where you have like 20 people at, that would be kind of a bummer at the end of a long streak.

WCP: D.C. is one of the shows, it's right around the corner from Baltimore, and you guys have often gotten compared to being a Dischord band. How has playing in D.C. factored into your career as a band?

Denny Bowen: I don't know, I guess the only thought is it was important to try and play there even though there was a period of time when we were so frustrated with the shows we would play in D.C. After a certain point it started getting better and better. It just seemed really important to try and play something that close. There should be more bands doing that regularly because, why not? Two cities could afford to be a little bit more symbiotic in their relationship musically I think sometimes.

WCP: What was so frustrating about those first shows you played in D.C.?

NS: The first couple years it was hard just to get a house show. Early on we didn't even much care playing there just because just to get on even some bad show was just to get at full speed. But then we started to have more stuff there, but even then it's just the old cliche at D.C. shows, everybody stands so still.

DB: Obviously it's changed now. The D.C. shows we've played have been pretty rowdy, which is awesome. I think also the standing still thing was something that then was a reaction to even before I was in the band. Kind of early on that was kind of the normal behavior at shows, people just kind of standing still, observing what's going on...Nolen ended up breaking that wall, making such in-your-face movement and remarks that we kind of had to pay attention or you'd look like a fool.

WCP: You mentioned the connection between D.C. and Baltimore needs to be a little stronger. Since the Baltimore scene came up midway through the last decade has there has been a stronger connection made between bands within the two cities? Is it still something that needs to be improved upon?

DB: I think there's definitely some inroads being made, and it can always be strengthened.

NS: With D.C. bands Hume and Imperial China, they both actively persue the Baltimore audience.

DB: Oh yeah, I mean I see Brit from Hume in Baltimore quite a bit. It kind of makes me feel bad, I kind of feel that the ball's in our court for a lot of Baltimore bands to try to just do stuff right down there.

WCP: Are Hume and Imperial China the two D.C. bands that you guys have maintained a strong relationship with?

DB: Hume played my house in the Copy Cat when I lived there a few times. That strengthened that relationship, at least on my end.

NS: There are, well, those two bands from there we really have a good connection with.

WCP: Once you're done and finish up in the studio and put everything out, what projects do you have in the works? I think I heard a little of Denny's new project [Roomrunner], but that's about it.

DB: Yeah, I have that new band where I'm playing guitar. I play all the instruments on the recording, save like a guitar track, but I've been working on writing stuff over the past year or two and I don't know, I always need some kind of outlet. I happened to get hooked up with a really good drummer through Brett so that obviously is awesome to me. I rarely get to not play drums and having someone really awesome play drums.

NS: Some friends of mine are more in the punk-slash-hardcore scene, we've been talking about starting something up towards the end of the year, but there's nothing really solid there. I think all three of us, we'll still be making music, just not together and hopefully we can play on the same shows and stuff.

DB: Yeah, I'm sure we'll help each other out and stuff like that. Even during all of it, we've all been busy doing one thing or the other, even throughout this past year, I played drums on Future Islands' record and Dan's [Deacon] new record. I'm always pretty busy, but without Double Dagger it's going to be interesting to go about things without trying to find a new outlet that's going fill that same speed, but I think it'll be easy to do, it'll be awesome when we get to share our new stuff together.

WCP: As far as the final show in Baltimore, is there anything that D.C. listeners should be aware of if they want to trek out to that as well as the D.C. show?

NS: As for the D.C. show, we're gonna play a slightly longer set than the normal. Actually, I don't know that was, but it'll be like much longer than usual. And the Baltimore show that's probably gonna be the longest that we've ever played. It's gonna be pretty epic. We might be dead at the end of it.

DB: That's actually in the setlist.

NS: At the final song we're gonna stop halfway through just because all our bodies are just gonna shut down.

Double Dagger plays with Imperial China and Holy Ghost Party Wednesday at the Black Cat.

Jersey rockers Titus Andronicus are on fire right now. Last year's The Monitor was one of my favorite 2010 releases, and the band has been touring non-stop since the record's release. Considering I've interviewed both Titus Andronicus and current tourmates Dinowalrus in the past, I figured ought to make it to their show together with Baltimore's Double Dagger. Last night, I went down to the Black Cat with freelance photographer and cameraman (and my bandmate) Brendan Polmer to see the action in person. Here's our post-show chat about the whole shebang.

Ryan Little: Three bands. Three killer sets. It felt good to leave a show that rocked so hard all the way through, especially considering I only knew a fraction of the songs beforehand. It seemed every band was really giving it their all, and there was a real artist-crowd connection. Had you heard any of Dinowalrus, the first band, prior to the show?

Brendan Polmer: I know, right? Actually, I hadn't heard of Dinowalrus before, but they were great fun. It felt like the songs in their set started off relatively structured and then got progressively weirder and darker—in a good way. Did you see the part at the end where the keyboardist/bassist used a strobe light as a prop/sound-altering device on stage?

RL: You know, I saw them get that strobe light out, but I must have been buying a beer when they actually used it. However, I definitely noticed the progression into weirdness as their set wore on. I saw them last year, and pretty much all of their set was bizarre, so it was really interesting to see them sound more, well, like a rock band. I think they're getting more focused, which suits them, but there's no shortage of wild, spacey sounds, which I always approve of.

The band I knew the least about, however, was Double Dagger. I knew they were a spazzy Baltimore band that lots of my friends enjoy, but I'd never heard them. Their Les Savy Fav-meets-Hold Steady minus guitar approach was a total blast.

BP: Oh man, where do I begin with Double Dagger? I agree with your Les Savy Fav comparison, but I would also add in a touch of Hunter S. Thompson in punk rock form. I was really confused at one point when I didn't see frontman Nolen Strals on stage but still heard his spastic shouts and screams coming through the speaker system. Turns out he had jumped off the stage and was in the middle of the crowd jumping around like a mad man. Everything about that band was both insane and wonderful; from the drummer's broken crash cymbal that looked like someone had taken a bite out of it, to the simple genius of the bass guitar as the sole tonal instrument of the trio.

RL: The band operates on pure charisma—I guess that's why they reminded me of Craig Finn a bit (that or the many Hold Steady T-shirts I spotted in the crowd). Watching Straals was like watching 30 Rock's Pete Hornberger on cocaine...but in a good way. It was cool to see Patrick Stickles from Titus Andronicus join them for a song, but I think Strals showed him up.

Of course, once Stickles went back to fronting his own band, all bets were off. Titus Andronicus hit the ground running and the crowd ate it up. God, it felt great to see a punk show where the audience really connected with the band. There's something really direct and gritty about that kind of intense interaction that other rock shows just can't replicate. It just felt youthful, I guess.

BP: Well, some might argue that Titus Andronicus isn't really a "punk" band—but after seeing them cover The Clash, Sham 69, and X-Ray Spex (a tribute to the late Poly Styrene), and as you mentioned the way the audience responded, I'd have to say that yeah, it was pretty punk rock. I was also really impressed with T.A.'s drummer, Eric Harm. For having such a simple setup, he really worked his snare drum to the max, giving the rowdy kids in the front a reason to jump around. I felt bad for the few that thought it would be a good idea to crowd-surf in the Black Cat, only to find themselves getting escorted out by club security.

RL: I suppose a lot of Titus Andronicus songs are just rock songs in the same way a lot of The Clash's songs are just rock songs, but it's that ferocious attitude and approach—when Stickles screams "Tramps like us, baby we were born to die!" it's hard to call it anything but punk rock...not to mention Amy Klein makes a hell of a Poly Styrene.

There's also a definite political edge to the band, considering they wrote an album about the Civil War and Stickles sports an American flag handkerchief, and it connects them to a lot of the punk history they covered. They certainly don't gloss over America's failures, and their depiction of war never approaches glamorous, but somehow they evoke chants of "U.S.A., U.S.A." from their audience. It's not a crowd you'd expect to be especially patriotic, but T.A. apparently reminds kids that loving America doesn't have to mean toting guns and quoting Sarah Palin. They tap into an underdog spirit that's as much a part of America's DNA as it is a part of punk rock, and when they encored with "If The Kids Are United," they pretty much summed it all up.

Nolen Strals, the singer of the abrasive Baltimore art-punk trio Double Dagger, has what he calls “a weird sort of internal conversation” whenever he's commissioned to do graphic design work for a large media outlet or corporation.

"Doing work for these major labels and these big corporate entities, there's part of me that's like, ‘Hell yes! This illustration? It's gonna be eeeverywhere’” says Strals, who started the design studio Post Typography in 2001 with Double Dagger's bassist, Bruce Willen. “But at the same time, it's kinda like, ‘Oh yeah, a major label, these are the machines that we rage against,’" As the studio’s profile has risen in recent years, Post Typography has earned commissions from The New York Times, Wired, Esquire, Time, and The Washington Post (disclosure: I work there as a copy aide). The studio recently worked for Columbia Records on the cover of The Roots and John Legend’s album Wake Up!

But Strals’ internal conversations aside, it’s not exactly productive to apply the tired debates over "selling out" to Double Dagger's members because they worked with a major label as part of their day jobs. Says Willen: "I think we try and view things in shades of gray, and not just be like ‘major labels bad, indie labels good.'"

On the 2009 song "The Lie/The Truth," they cast this gray area as the space wedged between what some consider to be unshakable absolutes: "In your perfect worlds of black and white/where talk of gray is treason/the compromiser is crucified/and no quarter ever given/You may make it easy to divide us/when you exaggerate the meanings of meanings/until everyone is defined as the righteous or the demons."

But it's also inaccurate to say that for Strals and Willen, Post Typography's corporate commissions are compromises. Their design work, from show posters to mass media, is known for being clever and witty. (Mary Murphy, vice president of design for the high-end textile company Maharam, a Post Typography client, describes the studio's style as "modern with a twist.")

In particular, the studio often bends and warps letters and numerals, the most basic units of written communication, to challenge ideas of how we see and interpret the printed word. "With lettering, part of the attraction for me is that letters, at their root, they are transmitting information," says Strals. "But since they are these abstract shapes that have been given this other meaning, they're flexible. So you can take those abstract shapes and you can bend them and rearrange them to carry more than just the information."

Double Dagger also plays with the parameters of their music: The group is capable of three-minute gut punches and more spacious, nuanced explorations of the punk idiom. The band formed in 2002, and over the course of three albums has gone from a stripped-down garage sound to its current state, a combination of thunderous and precise drumming from Denny Bowen, who joined the band in 2004, and buzzy, distorted bass from Willen in place of a lead guitar. Strals often enters with sung-spoken verses and choruses containing aggressive, full-throated wails. It’s a brand of punk that moves in boom and bust cycles of sonic explosions and melodic progressions.

"Things have just been progressing where it's like, we're not just writing songs verse-chrous-verse, then the end of the song anymore." says Willen. "We're adding other parts and not necessarily having a sort of typical pop song structure as much."

Bowen, who has no affiliation with the studio, did the best job drawing a parallel between the work of Post Typography and the music of Double Dagger. "When you guys were just doing primarily show posters and to the work you guys do now, you guys are making the audience use a different part of their brain and think differently with the visual palette," he says to his bandmates. "And I think that you're doing the same thing in Double Dagger, with the palette being rock."

"I like that," says Willen.

"That's a good quote," says Strals. "That's gonna be a pull quote."

Double Dagger performs with Imperial China and Tiny Bombs at 8:30 p.m. tonight at the Black Cat. $8.

Hi mom, how's Washington? (image via Ink 19)

Good morning, D.C.! Yesterday, one of the District's most favoritest bands announced a five-date reunion tour for early 2011. Predictably, the Internet lost its shit over the thought of the Dismemberment Plan playing "Pay for the Piano" (for real, it's a great song). What a Monday!

In slightly less important news, someone from What Not to Wear was here to rescue government denizens from their ill-fitting khakis. Apparently, it's really hard to walk around here in heels, so Stacy London and her entourage got a ride. Psh.

The MidCity Arts District branding is ruffling some feathers, and there's lots of pretty pictures from both Vampire Weekend's performance at Merriweather and Double Dagger's show at Comet Ping Pong. Here on Arts Desk, we've got three songs for slowly walking away from an explosion, and our own recap of Stacy London's presence.

Oh, I heard there's an election or something today, but I'm too busy listening to Emergency & I on repeat to be bothered! Have a good primary Tuesday!

"I really unabashedly am a bad singer," says Sam Herring of Baltimore's once rough-and-ragged—and now disarmingly introspective and motivic—Future Islands. He quickly qualifies the statement: "I don’t think I’m a bad singer, but I don’t consider myself a singer. I consider myself a performer who can sing a bit and does sing."

On the trio's upcoming record, In Evening Air, Herring's voice—an inflected, erudite growl, half Troggs and half armchair thespian—is a rewarding counterpoint to his lyrics, heartbroken and impressionistic, and Future Island's self-described "post-wave," a sometimes svelte, romantic take on synth-punk that feels spacious but not overloaded. The group plays tonight at the Black Cat.

"I’ll tell you, I sound 10 times better eight weeks into a tour because I’ve hit my stride," Herring says. "My voice is weaker but it’s somehow stronger. It’s been scarred over enough times."

A weakness for cigarettes and whiskey has been, well, helpful, if not always obviously so to Herring's friends. "I would tell them I was in the Tom Waits school of voice," he says.

"I try to completely let go of my voice, as much as I can," he says. "It’s funny that I get criticism—this guy is overly dramatic, he’s so soulful but it’s over this dance music. It’s the culture of pop music and electronic music that’s taken that soul out."

In other words: Expect more abandon than usually comes with drum machines and synths. Herring says he's used to being jumped on, rushed, and dogpiled during shows—most of the time, he manages to hold onto his mic despite the bruising. He wasn't so lucky last summer, though, when he toured as part of the Dan Deacon Ensemble in support of the junkyard-electronica musician's mammoth Bromst record. At a Paris gig, Herring was tackled by "this really drunk French kid." Six months later, he found out he'd torn his ACL, for which he had surgery this February.

Often on In Evening Air, Herring reaches those emotive highs. But on many songs—including some of the dancier ones—he sings in a softer, almost narrative voice. "We weren’t trying to make a party album," he says. That's never been the intention, ever since Future Islands formed from the ashes of its members' old band, Art Lord & the Self-Portraits. But the results—Future Island's scrappy and infectious 2008 album Wave Like Home, its entropic live shows—suggest otherwise. "I guess our music always came from the party atmosphere, but there’s always been that juxtaposition between what the music does and what I do."

The album, Herring says, chronicles a breakup he went through in 2008 while he was on tour, and the theme seeps into every lyric. Take the last song Herring wrote for In Evening Air, "Vireo's Eye," a ratchety anthem with a soaring chorus. "It would be so easy to just put nothing over it, and it would still be a great song," he says. "It was a challenge to me to write a final goodbye." Ultimately Herring concocted a sort of meta-pop coda: "Our own love has died through the medium of our music, and through our music I have chronicled the events of our love dying," he says. "The recurring line is, 'You are not my clementine and I am not your diamond's eye.'"

But as close as he is to his lyrics, Herring says he often reacts most strongly to the band's solely instrumental moments, the work of his bandmates J. Gerritt Welmers and William Cashion. Of one noisy fadeout on the record, he says: "It breaks my heart, and makes me so happy."

Future Islands perform with Double Dagger and Ed Schrader tonight at 9 p.m. at the Black Cat.

The trio's fuzzed-bass-and-monster drumming m.o. is a nod to that thinning brotherhood of post-punk musicians who highlight basement shows and fanzines (what are fanzines?), who haven't thought about wearing guyliner and going emo, who haven't dabbled in concept albums or made records where you need a Ph.D in Steve Reich to get. It's a throwback sound; the members modest well be wearing bootleg Fugazi T-shirts. (You definitely hear Fugazi in one of DD's older songs, "The Psychic"; the Jane Jacobs politics behind "Luxury Condos For the Poor" updates "Cashout.") All this means is that Double Dagger is the token rock band on just about any bill.

But don't let my lame comparison to Fugazi fool you. The band's sound is all it's own, having come from years of playing together. Double Dagger formed in 2002: bass guitar (Bruce Willen), that monster drumming (Brian Dubin) and singer/songwriting (Nolen Strals). Strals and Willen met in art school. Later, Dubin was replaced with drummer Denny Bowen.

This week we fired off some questions to the band via e-mail. The Q and A after the jump.

What have you guys been up today?

DENNY: I just woke up about 15 minutes ago. I put some coffee on. Bruce is probably drinking some somewhere. Nolen might have a hot chocolate though.

Why do you think Baltimore has such a fertile music scene? What do you think has made it so special?

DENNY: I think Baltimore has always been a fertile music scene and we recently had a great boom, which is undoubtedly really awesome. But I'm getting somewhat concerned because I don't see too many new bands forming. I see a number of new faces that have moved to Baltimore and have been drawn here for the artistic reasons, but I haven't seen much output from this wave.

Maybe the new output lies with other art forms, but I can't really comment on that. Also Baltimore is a small city and that is bound to breed a strong community. We actively fight to keep our arts and music scene alive and for the ability to support it. There is more crossover with bands and artists working with others that are coming from somewhere else entirely and still will have huge support from their peers. The specialness, I think, comes from a lack of shitty bands. But yeah, you want the short answer? Cheap rent.

Do you ever feel like the token rock band in Baltimore?

DENNY:  Maybe the loudest, but not the token rock band. I feel like we get called that at times, which makes us think we're doing something right. However, there have always been some great rock bands in Baltimore, going back to the start of Double Dagger to present times.

When you started writing More, did you have goals in mind on what you wanted the album to sound like?

DENNY: I think we wanted to be more powerful; we started writing these songs in late 2007 and I think we had less of a conscious idea of what we wanted the songs to sound like, we just played very much with one another, and not just playing at the same time.

I think More is one of the records that really stood out for me in that it doesn't have a lot of gimmicks–it's a rock record. A lot of indie bands seem to be straying from making rock or indie rock albums. I think it's difficult to make a good rock album–maybe more difficult than making a high concept freak folk record with loops and french horn parts. What do you think?

DENNY: Hey, more for us then! Seriously, I think a lot of bands are very timid when it comes to making a rock record. With technology today, it's somewhat difficult for bands not to indulge in its uses. We only wanted to capture our songs as best we could and flourish them up in subtle ways and having that sort of minimalist approach is what retains the quality, in my opinion. There's a place for everything, so the most difficult thing is being appropriate. It's easy to get caught up in genres, sub-categorization, and ghettoizing bands and we choose to not subscribe to any of that. Not that many other bands are, but to be honest, I don't know what "freak folk" is. Is it really freaky?

What was the hardest part about making More?

DENNY: Staying warm and avoiding being towed. Also, carrying all the equipment (including 3 bass cabinets) up and down like 6 flights of stairs really sucked. Recording the songs was mostly a smooth process, we knew them inside and out.

I think the drumming on the record is one of the most amazing things about More. Please praise the drumming. Do you think drums really make a band?

DENNY:  Totally! We wanted to make sure that the way the drums sounded on the record would be more like the way it sounds when you're standing in front of a drummer, and less like there are 3 mics on every angle of the drum. Additionally, Bruce and I have really synced up since we started writing the songs for More. There are only two instruments, so Bruce and I try to tastefully fill up any of the "space."

My father once told me that you can have a bad band with a good drummer and it can still sound good, but not the other way around. I think this statement holds true.

How do you think your sound has evolved? How do you think its evolved lyrically?

DENNY: I think the music has evolved in that we have thought less about what we wanted to sound like, and just played what we felt. As I said before, we focused more on complimenting one another's parts and how we can best serve each song. By doing this, I think its opened Nolen up to be more poetic and abstract with his lyrics.

NOLEN: Lyrically I dropped the art/design reference/metaphor thing a while back. It had run its course, and honestly I felt like it was holding me or us back some. Lyrically, there are still angry screeds here and there, but life's a little more complex at 30 than it is at 24, so what you write about just naturally becomes more complex. I'm not weaving intricate, literate, epics, but the point of view of the lyrics is more open and has more shades of gray, and less black and white than it sometimes was in the past. Of course there's still some of that more direct, antagonistic approach, because sometimes that's most effective.

This is for Nolen, I read somewhere that your parents are/were ministers? Where did you grow up? Did they have a church? What was growing up like?

NOLEN: Both of my parents have been United Methodist Ministers since the mid 80s, though my dad recently retired. I mainly grew up in small towns in the mountains of North Georgia, and they each served separate churches.

I don't think my upbringing was too different from that of most kids raised by a religious family in the South. My parents always were and still are very supportive of everything I do. My mom even let me have shows in the basement of her church-owned house. There was an awkward period in the 7th grade when I first told my parents I didn't believe in religion. But honestly my classmates were harder on me for that than my parents were.

A lot of kids stopped associating with me for that, but the metal kids started talking to me more.

How do you think that experienced effected you? How do you think it influenced your approach to songwriting and singing?

NOLEN: While I do not share their religious beliefs, I've always been inspired by my parents' conviction in their faith. I watched my dad face a lot of opposition and backhanded crap from the good-ol'-boy church political machine. He's a moving speaker and could have risen higher in the church had he toed the party line more, and his career visibly and financially suffered for following his heart instead of politics.

If there's any influence from my upbringing on what I do in the band, that's a huge one, speaking my mind about what I feel strongly about, no matter its popularity or what people may think of it. That and my leftist political leaning. My parents aren't 100% liberal, but they're certainly further left than most people ignorantly think southern Christians can be.

I read somewhere that you all played the Rock and Roll Hotel and the audience kinda sucked–what happened?

DENNY: Just was a very sparse audience, and we started kind of early. It was hard to gather back up in the drum world, but DC audiences have somewhat of a notoriety for being "stiff," and obviously our M.O. goes right against that.

I toured with the Dan Deacon ensemble this spring and when we played DC on that tour, people did go crazy and had a great time. Hopefully there will be more of that in DC in the future.

What do you hope the D.C. audience will do this time around when seeing you guys?

DENNY: Unfold their arms and slamdance!