The Eighth Note is 8 quick Questions with Wellington Musicians. A chance for us to catch up with people & see what they’re up to, or introduce you to a new musician/band and their music.
Up next is Craig, Mark & Reece from Glassblower.
Who are you? Tell us a bit about your music:
Glassblower was a much needed outlet in my life when it came along a year ago. I was feeling a lot of anger about a lot of the same institutions and belief systems in the world that much of the people reading this would be feeling as well. I’m fortunate enough to be playing in another band, Opium Eater, with Mark who is a phenomenal drummer and a massive hardcore fan. There was literally only one guitarist I asked to be a part of this and that’s Reece, in my mind he is one of the best grind/metal/hardcore guitarists in the country, he’s also playing in Wellington’s Dark Divinity. We all share very similar political views and clicked straight away on the songwriting front.
We’ve been labelled ‘Communists’, ‘hippies’, ‘cringe’ by the exact fucking people that we have a problem with. There’s a mentality of ‘gatekeeping’ directed toward so many groups, including women, minorities, our trans or gender neutral whanau and honestly any lower socio-economic person in our country that needs to be addressed. So often this perceived difference in value is weaponized against members of our community and no one bats a fucking eye, then if someone fights back, what? They’re a snowflake? They’re an agitator? This is the message we want to platform, these are the people we love, if that makes us snowflakes, then fuck it man. Fuck you. This is the core of Glassblower.
We are aware of the privileges we have been given in our lives, but that doesn’t mean we are okay with those institutions remaining intact. This isn’t some trend, we’re not going away, we will continue to give a platform to a message that we feel immensely passionate about. To anyone reading this that has ever felt marginalized, victimized, devalued or threatened, we hear you, a lot of people hear you. Your worth is more important than anything. You’re beautiful and you’re not alone, and enough of us are just as angry as you to make a change. Now go out there and fucking own today. xox
Credits: Glassblower
What have you been working on lately? Any new tracks or albums on the way?
We are in the process of finishing off our debut album ‘Younger than Old Money’ which will be coming out on Elimination Records as soon as humanly possible. Much like the rest of the world, COVID put an emphatic stop on our process for a while there. We did drop the single ‘The Abolitionist’ a few months ago on our good friend Olga’s compilation raising money for our black brothers and sisters in the United States having their civil rights attacked.
Where is the best place people can follow you & find your music?
Right now, you can find The Abolitionist on Bandcamp under the Protest Music NZ page. We are very active on Instagram, that’s the best place to follow us. Facebook is pretty shit, but we’ll still chuck shows up on there.
What were the 3 most influential albums to you growing up?
Craig:
Converge – You Fail Me
Without a doubt, this album changed my life. Jacob Bannon is a personal hero of mine, his art and his lyrics have helped me through a lot that I don’t need to go into here. The complexity, the violence and the potency of message makes this an absolute goldmine for any generation of hardcore fan.
Neurosis – Times of Grace
I’m not afraid to admit, I cried when I saw Neurosis live. If you deep search Facebook hard enough you’ll even find the picture of me staring up at Scott Kelly teary eyed. Neurosis redefined what heavy means in songwriting to me, there’s physical pressure from their riffs that doesn’t go away, even 15 years after first hearing this album.
Immortal Technique – The Third World
The greatest rap album of all time. Lyrically, Immortal Techinique is the greatest of all time. No one touches him, regardless of genre. Early on in his career he released some material with VERY questionable lyrical content which he has since gone on record to apologize for, but by the time The Third World came out, he was spitting critique of capatalism and creating hooks with Marxist theory. He uses his platform to preach an almost Deleuzian message about understanding your place in society and how this machine wouldn’t exist without you. Even if you don’t like rap music, but you are left leaning in your politics, I can’t recommend this enough.
Credits: Amanda Hailwood
Mark:
Metallica – And Justice For All…
One of the first cassettes I ever paid money for. I know everyone complains about the bass (#AndJusticeForJason), but honestly, after listening to the stems it’s clear that Jason sucks on this album and is obvious why they stripped that shit out. My first exposure to progressive metal, and imo Hetfield’s best vocal performance.
TDEP – Miss Machine
A friend burned me a CD of BTBAM Alaska, and threw Calculating Infinity in the remaining 30 minutes. Hearing Chris Pennie’s signature drumming style for the first time did to me what Van Halen – Eruption probably does to sweaty teenage guitarists, and subsequently filled me with both crippling self doubt and motivation to master the “bah du bah du bah”’s you hear on a few Glassblower tracks. Bought Miss Machine soon after, and the refined songwriting, technical brilliance, and catchy hooks blew my little 20y/o brain.
Tool – Aenima
Basically required listening growning up in the small farming towns surrounding Hamilton. The album still holds up today, and Third Eye is the best song Tool have ever written.
Reece:
Pig Destroyer – Prowler in the Yard
My introduction to grindcore past Napalm Death’s Scum, completely mindblowing at the time and still holds up today. The twisting riffs, the concrete basement drums, the stops and starts, the last four songs peaking perfectly to close it out – all time classic. I wouldn’t be doing this music without this album.
Opeth – My Arms, Your Hearse
Ghost Reveries was actually the first album I ever listened to with harsh vocals and Opeth were my gateway band into actual death metal, but this is the one that hit me the hardest and probably listened to the most during my highschool years. A great mix of the prog cheese Opeth pursued too hard later in their career and the atmospheric walls of heavy guitars and growls.
Cryptopsy – None So Vile
This album is my dad, and my dad can beat up your dad. Still goes hard, was why I first downtuned my first shitty starter guitar to B standard to learn some of the riffs at half speed. Speaking of half, at least half of the Glassblower riffs are just some variation of the sliding powerchords in Graves of the Fathers so cheers for that.
Credits: liam.photographynz
Which other Wellington musician (s) would you most like to work with?
There’s an amazing human being I’ve mentioned in this interview already named Olga who plays for an incredible band called Marrowspawn. We would absolutely love to throw down with her to create some fucking nasty noise/grind at some point. But I mean, in our world, split EP’s are a must and there’s SO many Wellington bands we’d love to split with, some of our favorites are Marrowspawn, Severed Beliefs, Stress Ghetto (Razored Raw), Zone Killer, Brainwave, oh my god I could go on for so long and I’m already feeling bad for all the homies I’ve not mentioned.
What’s your favourite Wellington venue to play in?
Oh dude, Valhalla. Ben keeps our scene alive. He’s the hardest working bro in all of New Zealand music. Imagine if he wasn’t around. I honestly don’t think Meow would even let half of us play there, haha.
In your songwriting or composing (or the band’s songwriting) how do the compositions and songs take shape?
We are 100% a collective. Every member of Glassblower contributes structurally to forming a track. It helps that our guitarist, Reece is an absolute monster and one of my favorite guitarists in the country. The dude brings riff after riff out of nowhere that are SET CLOSING RIFFS, every single time. Mark is easily the best drummer I’ve had the pleasure of working with in my entire life. We’re all very critical of each others work to try bring out the best for a song, not the individual playing the instrument. Lyrically I’m very inclined to come from the Marxist perspective, there’s a lot of themes of workers rights, civil rights, gender equality, unity amongst the working class and de-platforming that fucking idiot Ben Shapiro. I had someone tell me recently that my comments about Ben Shapiro weren’t very ‘peaceful’ – Let me say this here, we never claimed to promote a message of peace. There’s a lot of anger in this music, because every member of Glassblower shares the same political ideologies and we’re all pissed off about the same stuff.
Where/when is your next gig?
Symbiotic Death Fest on the 2nd-3rd of October at Valhalla is our last show until we go away and finish our album. We’ll be back, and we’ll be back fucking strong.