Hailing from LA, Entry are a hardcore band who don’t quite fit into the conventional mould. Sensing the band’s potential, having purchased a copy of the band’s debut 7” (entitled No Relief), Southern Lord’s Greg Anderson was proved right when the band summarily destroyed his piece of mind with Demons, the closing track on label debut Detriment. Having found ourselves similarly scarred by the experience of reviewing the album (check out the article here), we reached out to singer Sara G to find out more about the band’s formation, lyrical themes and existence under the current state of lockdown.
You started out in punk bands in Pennsylvania, is that right?
Correct.
Could you tell me a little bit about how you got involved in the punk scene at the outset?
It’s so long ago, every time I think about this, I feel ancient. I don’t know, I don’t even remember the first local show I went to or anything like that. I just remember starting going to local shows and then getting involved in online forums and stuff like that, picking up CDs at the store and, you know, really just I felt a connection to it and never let go.
That idea of a connection seems to be a really big part of Entry, because one of the thigs that came out very clearly form the band’s biography was this idea of punk as a unifying force, so was that something that was always important to you?
Yeah, I totally started hanging out with people that I met at shows and just similar ideology and things like that. It generally appeals to me and someone I want to be around.
How did you get involved in the playing and doing vocals?
I wanted to when I was super-young, like fourteen. I was just like “I wanna yell!” I had a guitar I never learned to play because, just my dad trying to teach me and it didn’t go well and it put me off learning an instrument for a really long time, which I regret, but I always wanted to do vocals.
So, how did you find your first band, do you apply to an advert? Or did they reach out to you?
I was just hanging out with friends and listening to music and just like goofing off and nodding along to it and they were like: “wow! Pretty cool! Let’s start a band.” And that was it. That was like 2008 and even then, I’d wanted to start bands before, and people were just not into the idea at that time.
One band I’m a huge fan of is the Swans and I remember reading Jarboe’s recollections of starting out with the band and the confrontational reaction of some of the fans at that time – is that something that you found when you were starting out?
I mean, I think the scene it is mellowing out now, but then it was still pretty tough and pretty weird.
Did you find that you had support from your bandmates through that, or did you have to deal with it in your own way?
I had support and, again, with punk I think there were a lot more people who weren’t men in bands. But if you were trying to be more in the hardcore scene, that was a little bit harder. But I had support form my friends and just playing shows, people were nicer after they heard my bands. It’s never been anything too crazy.
When it came to putting together Entry, again, one of the things that stood out was the lyrical themes of Detriment, and how each song relates to one aspect of detriment to self and society… almost kind of… I hate to use the word ‘concept record’… but, you know… so how did you develop the lyrical themes to get that kind of narrative?
I mean I came up with that name / theme afterwards really. I always struggle with putting a name on something, I’m horrible at that and I just kind of sat with it and, very last minute, we needed a name for this. So, I sat with it and tried to think about what I was thinking when I wrote all the songs and that was it – so kind of reversed in a way.
So, when it comes to lyric writing – do you produce the lyrics and then the band look at that and develop the music for that, or is it the other way around?
Other way around. I’ve written lyrics at recording. It’s the very last thing to happen.
Again, looking at the biography, there was a really interesting point about the importance of dealing with the past and learning from history, which is quite a contested concept right now… so, it seems there’s a lot of thought and underpinning philosophy behind the themes?
Yeah, I just write whatever I’m feeling at the moment. I never really try to reach out and think that I need to write about a specific thing. I’ve tried that and it doesn’t really work for me. I can’t put feeling into something that I’m not at the moment thinking about.
So, it’s more of a stream of consciousness thing at the outset?
Pretty much, yeah.
Do you then come back and edit anything before the final performance, or let it fly as it was when you wrote it?
For the most part, I don’t really think I do that. I’m sure that here and there I’ve touched up stuff and made it sound a little better; but for the most part, it’s as I wrote it.
In terms of politics, punk has predominantly had political themes running through it; but have you found anyone challenging Entry’s views?
Yeah, I definitely see that with friends’ bands that are a little bigger and have more reach, but so far, with us, no one has said anything. But if they did, what could I do? I just wouldn’t listen to it. I’m not going to change it for you, you know.
I think, for me at least, bands that address ideas such as critical thinking and questioning the world around them can receive some dissent, particularly on social media as they start to grow.
I mean, we’ve played at least a show where the majority of the people had no idea of who we were, and juts had completely opposing views on everything. And I feel like maybe we got a couple of fans that day, but the majority will probably never listen to us again and that’s fine. You know, I saw comments on line, like whatever… again, especially being lumped more into metal and things like that, there’s a lot of different types of views around, but for the most part, I think we’ve pretty much stayed within the realm of punk and for the most part, pretty left leaning.
Growing up with bands like Sonic youth and Swans, it always appealed to me that these bands had amazing cover art and the packaging on this record was really cool, so I was wondering who in the band was most into that and how you developed that side of things?
I just like the art and things like that in general. We weren’t sure what to do with this, but we wanted something cool and captivating in a way. So, we put our trust in two of our friends to do it. We sent the lyrics to my friend, she did a photo shoot and she sent it to our other friend, who works at Southern Lord; he’s the art director there and we just said: “have at it! Take what we did and make your own art with it!” And they did and we fell in love with it. It worked out.
I don’t know about you, but I used to spend hours going through bins in record stores and if you found something cool, you might have no idea how it sounded, but you’d buy it anyway because something with artwork that cool couldn’t possibly suck!
100% We had so many conversations about this, just reminiscing about, like, when were in high school and go to the alternative music section, find whatever looked cool and just buy that and hope it was good.
When it came to putting the record together, firstly I was kinda surprised at how impactful it is and, of course it’s really short, but when you have something that extreme, you get so much more out of it when it’s kept short and sharp – so are you guys as a band good at self-editing, or were you helped in the regard?
We did everything ourselves. We recorded, mixed and everything ourselves. We just went in and recorded and were just like “that’s it!” There was no outside influence at all. We just wrote as many songs as we felt wouldn’t overdo it. We generally write short songs. We have maybe one or two songs that are three minutes long. Our first sets were maybe ten or twelve minutes long and now we play for maybe eighteen. I just feel like with punk like this, short is good.
I agree, if you try and overdo it, the listener just ends up getting beaten down… but I loved Demons and the way that it caps off the record and this record with this evil, slow-motion sludge… was there a natural order for this record already in mind, or did it take a while to get it sitting how you wanted?
We changed it a couple of times, just with what we thought sounded better. I know that we put thought into it and obviously that song had to go last, it would be weird to go anywhere else. I don’t know, we just kind of played around with it a little bit, until it sounds good.
I love that idea of putting the super-heavy, long song last – that idea of tearing everything down at the end.
Yeah, we didn’t even really mean to write that song. We were just playing around, and we just thought “this is sick!” and threw it on.
It fits neatly with your label mates on Southern Lord.
Yeah, definitely. I’m pretty sure it’s the first song that Greg commented on, like: “woah, this rocks!” And we were like: “yeah, well, of course it’s that one!”
How did you get connected to Southern Lord in the first place?
We had a 7” out before and I don’t know he heard about it, but he ordered one and we eventually wrote a note like “thank you! Big fans!” And, eventually he had us on a couple of the ‘Power of the riff’ Southern Lord shows and we just kept in contact and we said, “hey, we’ve got a record we’ve made” and he wanted to do it, which is pretty awesome and overwhelmingly cool. We’re just like a punk band.
That’s the dream for any band, isn’t it? To get in touch with someone who really digs your stuff and wants to put it out there – that’s awesome!
Yeah!
It was you and Clayton Stevens who formed the band initially, how did you get the other guys involved, because they have other projects, right?
Yeah, they’re in an indie-pop band called Sheer. They’re really good. Our friend, Gina, who sings in the band has filled in on shows, playing for bass for us also. It’s like a nice little community. Clayton and I started out long distance when I was in Pennsylvania and I moved here, we had two other people playing in the band and they both had… one moved and the other was pretty busy with other stuff. First, we had Sean, who played with us. He just used to come to shows and we were friends and it was like” “you play music, play in the band!” and the other one moved, really last minute, so we asked Chris, whom I had never actually met in person and we had a mutual friend and we just asked him if he wanted to go on tour for two weeks. He only did a week of that tour but it just kind of worked out and felt natural when he was playing with us, so we eventually just had him join the band.
I don’t know how it’s going in the US, but over here, we’re locked down and band activity has totally stopped. Are you able to do anything at the moment?
Nothing! It’s just a disaster for us. It’s just complete garbage right now. I think that we may go back to our initial phase of lockdown, which is essential work only. It’s pretty awful and no one’s playing shows. I’m fairly sure people are doing some sort of shows, somewhere… I would not recommend it. I don’t personally want to get ill or infect anyone I know, so…
So, how are you guys dealing with it? Are you able to rehearse, or just totally shut down?
We have not at all. I don’t know. I think Sean and Chris may be recording some people occasionally, but I don’t feel comfortable. I go into work and Clayton goes into work, but I still don’t feel comfortable being around other people. So, we tried to write a song over Zoom, which was really funny. It kind of worked, it was like Chris in his studio playing drums, while we’re on the couch playing riffs. It was pretty hilarious. It’s tough for us, we live in an apartment, so we can’t really play loud music.
Anything you’d like to add for your UK fans?
Are there any out there? I hope you like it. Not much to say really, just stay safe right now. We really appreciate anyone checking out the album and it means a lot to me, for sure.
Entry’s brutal debut, Detriment is out now via Southern Lord.
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