Comeback Kid: Heavy Steps On Hollow Ground
Few bands capture the raucous, outsider spirit of hardcore quite like COMEBACK KID; over twenty years they’ve charted a course all their own, not quite part of the scene but always inseparable from it. With latest record Heavy Steps due out early this year, it made sense to catch up with frontman Andrew Neufeld to talk about it, not fitting in and how he’s kept going through the last couple of years.
“It’s been challenging,” he says in an early contender for understatement of the year. They’re determined to roll with the punches, though, even with their most recent tour cancelled and things looking ropey for live music at the moment. In spite of the setbacks and challenges, though, he’s almost grateful for the downtime. “If we wouldn’t have had the shutdown and everything, we probably would’ve taken even longer to write this record. Because we had a really busy year and then, we’re gonna expect ourselves to get off tour for a month, go straight into writing and then go back on tour. It probably would have taken way longer and been a different record. It kind of gave us some kind of purpose,” he explains through drags on a cigarette. He’s almost incessantly positive, putting a far more upbeat spin on the time off that people have been forced to take. “It definitely forces you to re-evaluate what you’re doing,” he begins. “Anybody who’s like, ‘oh I wish I could do this and that with my life, but I don’t have the time’, well you got the time to work on yourself, so I definitely did,” referring to not only keeping busy but keeping himself sane during the various lockdowns.
He’s very open about some of the struggles faced during the last few years, especially the challenge of not being able to tour, something COMEBACK KID have done incessantly since their formation two decades ago. Instead of their particular brand of high-energy punk and hardcore isn’t conducive to sitting around, as he swiftly found out; “One thing I did, the one thing I really missed is I felt I couldn’t exert energy. So I’d even go to the rehearsal space by myself, put on the PA with the music or some of the demos, take my shirt off, mosh around in the room and sing!” He laughs.
As we get onto the subject of how they consider themselves a hardcore band, but have never quite felt like they fit in with a specific niche, it’s clear that they relish this because instead of feeling like they don’t belong, it’s more that they can belong anywhere they want. “Maybe part of it is being Canadian,” he reckons. “We don’t ever feel fully in the mix with the American hardcore bands. Some of the upbringing we had, with different styles of music, I don’t know too many hardcore bands that toe the line as well, with the punk rock scene as well.” He’s not wrong; they’ve played festivals with the likes of PENNYWISE, NOFX, FRANK TURNER and many others that you wouldn’t expect of most hardcore bands, “but it’s not weird to see COMEBACK KID do it”. To hear him tell it, it’s simply borne of them having such a wide range of tastes and influences. From the 90s skate punk he likens them to, to metallic hardcore and metal itself. If that makes it sound like he considers them to be genre-smashers, he’s the first to shoot that notion down. “We’re not like bending genres by any means,” he laughs, “we stay in our lane, but it’s our own thing. And that’s what’s cool about it!”
The album itself, Heavy Steps, sees them returning to their Winnipeg roots – mostly due to needing to be around family to look after them – and working again with John Paul Peters, who they recorded their debut with. “It was done all over the place!” He exclaims, as his vocals were recorded in a separate booth, the mix was sent to the now-legendary Will Putney in the US, and they even bagged a feature with GOJIRA’s Joe Duplantier on Crossed, which he recorded at home in France. This hybrid, almost border-hopping approach didn’t just extend to the music either; “we were dodging restrictions as we were doing it,” he explains. “We would just like, rent an Airbnb in Winnipeg, just hope for the best and jam in the basement because the rehearsal spots weren’t even open!”
While there’s no clear references to the pandemic on Heavy Steps, it’s clearly a record forged by it. “It’s the picture of desperation, it’s a desperate character, trying to claw their way through life,” Neufeld explains of the album, in particular the line “heavy steps on hollow ground”, taken from the title track. “It’s a fearless, come test me. But also, there’s a little bit of this caution to the wind. It’s overconfidence, but it’s a lot of self doubt.” You wouldn’t think it to listen to the album; Heavy Steps is catchy, full of rousing choruses and gang chants but it ends with the song Menacing Weight in which Neufeld sings of “being at this standstill, and needing music to save you, just still not really knowing the answers”. It’s not only the album they needed to make, but its sound of perseverance in the face of such adversity will surely bring comfort to many.
Heavy Steps is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.
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