Black Hole Eats The Tornado will be your first release with Say-10 Records. How did you decide who to work with? What has working with them been like?

Adam liked something that we put up, maybe it was our live album, and he started following us on Instagram. I was like, “Hey, you checked out our music before?” and he was like, “Yeah, I’ve been a big fan for a while”. I was like, “We have another album that’s finished already that I’m looking to find a home for”. We discussed it and it blossomed. He’s been a good guy to work with. He’s been a very hands-on. His mind and heart are in the right place. He’s fair and he puts effort in and puts some resources behind it. It sounds so strange saying that, you’d think as far as indie labels go that’d be obvious but sometimes it’s not always obvious.

We’re still very much hands-on. I’m very much still like, “Did you get it to this person?” I just know that I need to make sure it’s got done, that’s just how I am. It’s been good so far. We wanna push this as far as possible.

The album art was done by your longtime collaborator Erik Olafh, who does all of your art. How did that creative collaboration begin?

We played Muddy Roots a few years ago. He was the artist for Muddy Roots and he drew a thing of us. I was like, “That’s pretty cool, I like this. Hey man, do you do art for other people besides Muddy because I would love to get you to do something for us”. He was like, “Yeah, for sure”. We built the relationship from there because I liked his art.

He gets the visions that are in my head. When I say, “I want this, I want that” he’ll be like, “Ok, cool”. Then he’ll show me his sketch and I’ll be like, “Oh, yeah!” He fleshes it out very well. It kinda gives us a more distinctive intensity musically as far as the art is concerned. He’s great. Shoutout to Erik Olafh in Mexico! He’s incredible.

The longer you look at the art, the more you notice.

Yeah! That’s the point of the layers. Always to me, good art is stuff you can get right away but at the same time you’re like, “Woah, I missed that. Oh snap, there’s a lot in there!” The point is to create audio-visual canvases. You’re creating the art that reflects the music and the music reflects the art. Everything reflects, so it goes with the experience of the whole thing.

That’s how my mind works. I love art in all mediums; paintings, drawings, music. I draw a little bit. I like seeing stuff, I like hearing stuff, I like reading. Good art takes you on a journey without even hearing words and once you hear words, it becomes flesh. That’s how I view it.

Do you have a piece of art for this album, whether it’s the album art itself or single art, that really spoke to you?

All of them because they represent different things. The single art and the album art are ideas that I specifically came up with. When I see something, I wanna redraw it and add the juxtaposition of this with that. They’re all ideas that are always in my head. They’re infinite.

The “Cornbread and Collard Greens” one is really cool because it’s a take on the classic Peanuts Franklin with Charlie Brown; he was on a side by himself and now he has his friends with him. Riley and Huey from The Boondocks is with him and you got Black Bart Simpson, who was a character that was heavily bootlegged in the ‘80s. He was a character that was part of the urban landscape so that’s why he’s in there. Plus Chef is the DJ. It’s pop culture references but at the same time it’s a lot more layered and there’s more significance. It’s representation too. Then the song’s called “Cornbread and Collard Greens” so it’s like, “Woah, I know this image but this is different”.

The “Peace” art is a flip of a Keith Haring type of art. They’re all pieces of a bigger piece, like part of a bigger puzzle.

How did the idea for the album art come about?

I saw that image of Louise Jenkins Meriweather [from 1957 where she's smoking a cigarette in front of the police] and I was just like, “That’s crazy!” I like redrawing stuff and adding different things so I was like, “I’m gonna have a tornado here and I’m gonna have the picture of Louise Jenkins, who was so defiant in the face of such an oppressive system, here”. The world is in chaos but she’s still navigating. I feel like that’s what our music represents; there’s joy, there’s rage, there’s hope, there’s light, there’s a lot of things going on. I felt that depicted that, especially putting the different images together. That’s the front cover.

For the back cover, I made Emmett Till a saint. On our album Ghost in the Shadows I said, “Emmett Till died for your sins”, so I was like, “I’m gonna make him a saint”. He had the atrocity that happened to him that unfortunately is kinda still happening. He brought more awareness to the consciousness of a lot of people’s psyches. I wanted to respect him, pay dues to him, and at the same time make him a saint, not just have a young boy who was disfigured because of a disgusting, heinous act of violence. It’s socio-political but it’s still gotta look great. To me, the art has to be meaningful but it still has to be striking because that’s how I feel our music is.

My son, Hannibal, came up with the title years ago when he was 6. One day he took a bath and we were walking to the train station after. While we’re walking he says, “Dad, the black hole eats the tornado” and I was like, “Woah, woah, woah, hold up. What did you say? Black hole eats the tornado? Wow, that’s crazy! How did you come up with that?” The title was crazy, it was just nuts! Then he told me how he came up with it. When you’re in a tub and you let the water out, the water goes down the drain in a circle and it’s like a black hole. He said, “It’s a tornado of water”. I made it mean something else, but that was his original meaning.

He came up with an EP title that we had in 2017 called Eat The Monster and my daughter came up with the title for our 2020 album Ghost In The Shadows. My children come up with a lot of stuff. I’ll be having conversations with them like, “Woah, what did you say? That’s crazy! Where did you get that from?” Then they’ll be like, “I just came up with it”. When they’re trying it doesn’t come out like when they’re like, “How about this?” You just don’t think about it, you just be. This just comes from them, I’m fortunate. They get all the credit. They’re major contributors. [laughs] Shoutout to my children, Hannibal and Adira!

Everything just comes out naturally.

Yeah, we’ll be having a conversation and he’ll just say something and I’ll stop like, “Oh, wow!” That’s a big influence on our music. I want my children to be able to hear the music and hear a good message and feel good. I’m not like, “I’m going to make this for my children” but I think that once I became a parent, that inspired a lot of the music and the message I was putting into the music indirectly. Shoutout to them, they’re great. Rebelmatic’s for the children! [laughs]

“Smoke Clears” opens with a snippet from Viola Fletcher’s 2021 US Congress testimony. Why did you decide to include this snippet in particular?

In the first verse I’m talking about the massacre in Tulsa, Black Wall Street, like, “We survived your genocide / You surprised to see our face” and I was painting a picture. With painting, you need different colours and different textures, so an actual testimonial from a survivor of this helps paint the picture even more. The lyrics were already written and I was like, “Wait, she said, ‘You can still smell the smoke’. There it is!” We’re going to tell the story, the story has to be told. There are certain elements within punk music that haven’t been discussed. We’re discussing them how we’re discussing them because I feel like everyone’s supposed to take their experiences and bring them to the forefront, whatever those experiences are. That’s the great thing about it.

Representation is always important. I have never heard anyone in punk talk about Black Wall Street so I wanted to hear about it. The great thing in punk is if there’s a band that’s not doing what you want to hear, you can become the band that you wanna hear. If you're like, “I like them but I don’t like what they’re talking about”, then start a band and talk about the stuff you think should be talked about for you. I’m about information, I’m about Black culture, and I’m about culture in general so I definitely bring it to the forefront.

Expression is cathartic, but there’s heavy topics too. Our shows are always fun but there’s very much a message in it. It’s energy and all that stuff but it’s a lot more than just jumping around on stage and getting everyone to sing a rally cry. That’s the celebratory part but there’s this catharsis, there’s rage and venting, and then there’s a tradition of storytelling that we’re continuing. Hence, “When the smoke clears, we’re still here”.

It’s each one teach one, ideally. If we’re willing to have an open mind and an open heart and listen, all of us can learn something we might not have known or something we might’ve been interested in before and now this gives us that much more interest. It’s cool.

Like your song “Know The Ledge” which talks about the importance of knowledge.

Yeah, “Know the ledge / Knowledge is key”. A lot of our music is about resistance and resilience. For me, it’s shifting the paradigm of this “born to lose / live fast, die young” stuff. I think that’s a nihilistic view of things and people have a right to do whatever they want, but that’s not me. That’s not the energy or the things that I’m here to promote. I’m not here to promote “live fast, die young” because when people die or leave this plane, the same people who are saying that are the people who are boohooing the hardest. It’s a lie. You wanna live a good life, a healthy life, and be productive and contribute to this plane we’re on.

Learning is cool! Why do people try to make it not cool? It’s a cool thing to learn, it’s a cool thing to have fun, it’s a cool thing to be who you are and to be your higher self. No matter how we cut it, we’re all in this together. One way or another, we have to be individually accountable for our actions and what we do. At the same time it’s an ecosystem, so what someone else does is going to affect us even if we don’t want it to. That’s just how it happens and we’re dealing with it over here now with some political stuff. It affects us even if we say, “I don’t care. That doesn’t affect me day-to-day” but it does, inadvertently it does affect us. Learn, you must learn.

Talking about art and knowledge, “Cooking Up The Medicine” has a lot of literary references.

I’m so glad you caught it, that’s dope! [laughs] I read and I’m specifically a lot into Black literature. Not to be overly pretentious but as an analogy, it’s medicine for a sick world. Plus the term “cooking up the medicine” is a reference to Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” - “Johnny’s in the basement / Mixing up the medicine” and “I’m in the basement / Cooking up the medicine”. I like Dylan a lot.

It’s my writer / literary song. If you hear it and like it, you’ll be like, “Oh, this is a good song!” but then if you know you’ll be like, “Oh, he said ‘I know why the caged bird sings with the bluest eye / Go tell it on the mountain / Heart a colour purple, now a raisin in the sun’”. Everything is a reference to books I’ve read in that song, like Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown, Soul On Ice by Eldridge Cleaver, and And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou. It’s things I like to hear and things we enjoy but if you know the references automatically you’re going to be like, “What!? This is a punk record, what the fuck did he just say? Did he say Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston? What the fuck is going on over here?” [laughs]

On “Peace” you talk about leading with love, remaining positive, and having a healthy outlook. What’s helped you to do that?

I stopped drinking and smoking years and years ago. Today’s day 102 of giving up sugar and processed food. I’ve been in therapy but a lot of introspection, healing, and really seeing what life to me is really about, has helped. The root of everything is like, “What do I hear in music? What drew me to this music? I was an angry young man at this time and I still have rage in me and I still have things that bother me”. It came naturally. I would hear something that would almost be like an affirmation because music to me is kinda like spells; if you’re singing something so much it kinda comes into your psyche. So if you’re singing, “I just wanna die” it’s in your psyche and you’re making that a reality. If you’re like, “I will not be controlled by hatred / I will lead with love / I will choose to heal / I don't claim I got the answers / I‘m still working it out / I’ll eat up all your cancer / And then spit it out / Positive energy activates / Constant elevation”, then that’ll be the stuff that gets into your psyche. To me, it’s about making music that’s, ideally, catchy anthems and shifting the frequency.

I believe words are really powerful and set to music, they have even more power. That’s why all of us are involved with music whether we’re listening to it, writing about it, or just supporters of it. It’s a soundtrack to a lot of our lives. I want to contribute in a good way. When H.R. said, “So I say to youth right now / Don’t sway to the unjust / No matter what they say / Never give in, never give in” in Bad Brains’ “At The Movies”, it spoke to me so much at 16. I want to contribute that.

My favourite group of all time is Sly and The Family Stone. A lot of the messaging in the lyrics is like, “You don’t have to die before you live” and “A private thought cannot be bought”. I’m just like, “Yeah, you don’t have to die before you live”. It sounds like such a simple lyric but you have to get out and really enjoy this life while you're here. It’s the mindset. That’s kinda what “Peace” is about and a lot of our music is too. We had a song called “Born To Win” on Ghost in the Shadows. I like putting those messages and nuggets into the music because that’s who I am and that’s what resonates for me. I realized certain music in my life played a huge role, especially when you’re going through darker times. Listening to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme or for me, specifically that Bad Brains song, “At The Movies” and Sly and the Family Stone always get me in a good space. I wanna give back to what’s given to me. That’s the theme, just putting different thoughts out there.

We’re making music but there’s a certain energy that’s in it. We’re not gonna act like we’re devoid of wanting to do good as human beings. My convictions are my convictions and ours are ours. I’m not gonna preach to you about anything because I don’t want to be preached to about things, but at the same time I know what I stand on and what I value. That’s ingrained in the music because that’s what we do, that’s what I do.

Like, “This is who we are and here it is”.

Take it or leave it, it’s alright. There’s enough music out there for everyone. We want it to resonate with you and if it does, it does. If it doesn’t, what are we supposed to do? We’re not going to stop being who we are.

Your video for “Help” has footage from the Village Halloween Parade mixed in with your live performance. What does the parade mean to you? Why did you choose to include that footage?

Our video guy was down there capturing footage. That parade is a very vibrant thing, specifically in New York. I was thinking about the video and I always have ideas like, “This would be impactful because it encapsulates to a certain point what we’re conveying”. There’s a lot going on. It almost feels like a horror show but it’s not horror, it’s a celebration. But, at the same time, it could be considered creepy without being campy. There's a lot of creativity there too. I think what we did was pretty cool.

I wanted to incorporate that and the black cat. I think the black cat tied everything in more. It’s prowling, it’s considered “bad luck”, and the obvious, we’re a bunch of Black guys. Maybe the black cat is us but as a little cat. The black cat is just navigating through the world. There’s a lot of connotations that come with a black cat, it’s like, “Ugh, stay away from the black cat!” Maybe I’m giving you too much with that one. [laughs] So yeah, maybe the black cat represents us as well.

It all ties in.

Absolutely, it has to make sense. To me, it has to mean something. It can appear random but it’s not random, there’s a lot more to it. There’s meaning behind a lot of stuff. There’s more than just energy and good songs, but that’s very important too. Sometimes people see us live and think we could be a party band because a lot of our shows are like a celebration and we bring people into it. If you’re not necessarily hearing what we’re saying and you’re just feeding off the energy and infectiousness it’s a party, but we’re not a party band.

There’s a mix of energy.

Absolutely, it’s the human experience. Sometimes you wanna party, sometimes you wanna read. It’s all in there.

Speaking of playing live, you have some US shows coming up in the spring including your record release show in May and you’re playing some festivals too including Camp Punksylvania for the first time.

We’re playing Draft City Music Festival in Green Bay on April 26. It’s a multi-day festival. On the 23rd, De La Soul is headlining. On the 26th, it’s Less Than Jake, GZA, J Roddy Walston, us, and Hang Ten. That’s really cool. It’s a free festival for the NFL draft day and there’s gonna be thousands of people there. We’re playing Punk Island this year too. We’ve got a lot of stuff happening. [laughs]

On May 3 we’re playing our record store signing/performance at Generation Records, May 4th we’re playing Washington Square Park for Rock Against Racism, May 9th we’re playing in New Brunswick at Cinco De Mayo, May 10th we’re playing at an open studio in MD, on the 24th we’re playing Tompkins Square Park, and on May 31st we’re playing Chapel of the Dog Festival in Cortland, New York. We got a lot of stuff going on. It’s happening. We need to get back to Canada. We played a couple dates in Toronto a while ago. We need to get back up there, I wanna play Pouzza Fest.

What are you looking forward to the most about the shows you have coming up?

Having fun, meeting new people, exposing people to our brand of music, selling records, selling T-shirts - just the whole experience. As long as there’s people there, we’re ready. It doesn’t matter. If you have an open mind and an open heart and you love hearing music, especially the brand of music we’re doing with punk and groovy stuff, we’re here for it. It does not matter, we’re ready. We’re ready to go.

I’m looking forward to the experience. I like getting on the road with my brothers and sharing the love, sharing the positivity, and having fun. I’m looking forward to people hearing this new album. I think this is some of our best work we’ve done and I think people should hear it. We’ve been playing some of the songs off of it for a while. We know from the crowd response that it works. We play songs live a couple times before we even record them so we know they work.

Which one have you been playing the most?

We’ve been playing the majority of the record because it’s been done, it was just a matter of finding a home. The longest is definitely the “Intro” piece and “Fly Broken Wings” then “Cornbread” and “Help” and then “Forever More”. We play those a lot. There’s more. We’ve got another project already done. It’s already mixed, mastered, and has artwork.

Which part of Black Hole Eats The Tornado are you proudest of?

The whole thing, the whole project. It’s my current favourite Rebelmatic record but it’s up to the people to decide how they feel about it compared to our other stuff. I think it’s some of our best stuff. It’s my favourite for right now. I need people to hear it and to understand it. I feel like it’s musically expansive. When Refused said The Shape of Punk to Come they weren’t talking about us, but I think we definitely define that. I think we define doing stuff that you might’ve not necessarily heard in punk before. You’ve heard grooves before and you’ve heard certain things but I think we got a lot of stuff in our music that is distinctively us. It’s like, “Oh, that’s that Rebelmatic type of shit. They’re doing that”.

We’ve done hundreds and hundreds of shows together with this unit and we create very well together. This is our 3rd or 4th project we’ve done with the same lineup. When you’ve got hundreds of shows under your belt with the same people, you become tighter. We all listen to various music so it all bleeds in. Nothing was like, “We gotta make this”. It was, “Oh, that’s dope. That sounds cool!” We’re not trying to make the ultimate hardcore record, we’re not trying to make the ultimate punk record, we’re not trying to make a hip-hop-hardcore-funk record. We just make music we like. That’s why you don’t hear 10 songs sounding like “Smoke Clears” or “The World Is” or “Peace” or “Help”. I couldn’t play that. I wouldn’t want to play something where we did 10 songs or a whole album that’s just one style. I would be bored.

A lot of bands have a style and it becomes like you know what you’re going to hear. It’s cool and it’s good, but that one thing is always gonna be the same thing. With us, I feel like it’s cohesive but if you listen to the whole album no song sounds like the same song. They’re part of the same tree but they’re different branches. We pride ourselves on that. We’re diverse people, we’re gonna make diverse music. We got way more ideas that we’re gonna bring to this. People don’t understand what’s about to happen! [laughs] There’s infinite possibilities of what you can do, especially if you have the capabilities, the hunger, and the care. You’re still living so there’s more inspiration from different places. You’re drawing from different places and you’re refining things. It’s sonic alchemy.

You can’t force it.

There’s no need to force it because we’re not trying to be anybody but us. We’re not trying to be like, “Yo, this is the new thing, let’s sound like this”. We do what we do and that’s cool. I think if we were trying to be like, “We have to make this type of record” that would be corny. People do what they do and I respect artistic creativity and expression. Hopefully, people will respect and appreciate ours while we’re here. Don’t wait until we’re not here to tell us how great we are. We know we’re doing some really interesting, cool stuff.

Is there anything that I didn’t ask that you’d like to add?

Listen to the album, Black Hole Eats The Tornado. We put it in the genre of punk and hardcore but it’s way more than that. You could say that’s the base but there’s funk and hip-hop and jazz and soul. It’s groovy. It’s James Brown in a mosh pit. It’s us. We’re proud of it and we hope you like you like it as much as we like it.

We’ll be on the road, come out and support it if we’re in your town. If you want to see us in your town, talk to your local promotors and tell them to get us there and we’ll be there with bells on. We want to spread the love in a holistic way and get the message out to as many people as possible.