Municipal Waste: The Heart Of Partying
Few bands have ever devoted themselves so exclusively to absolute ragers as MUNICIPAL WASTE. Having stayed the course for over two decades now, the frequency of the crossover thrashers’ output may have slowed a little in recent years, but its ferocity certainly has not. We caught up with frontman Tony Foresta just a week ahead of the release of album number seven – Electrified Brain – and as he joins us from a parking lot outside a festival in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the main takeaway is that that isn’t about to change anytime soon either. With ANTHRAX’s tour bus just out of shot, and an unnamed rapper warming up somewhere in the background, it’s clear that Foresta is firmly in his element here.
“At first I was kind of just getting fucked up all the time and being really negative,” admits Foresta when we ask him what the forced pause of the last couple of years was like for him. “My friends were dying and sad shit was going on, but I didn’t really use that as fuel for writing a metal record like a lot of people probably did during the pandemic. I think if anything we were focused on making this record something positive, something for people to have as a soundtrack to when they go out and have a good time again after being cooped up for so many years.”
“I didn’t want to get all emo and try to write a fucking bummer record,” he adds. “It is more aggressive, and I feel like we used that time to work on the sound of the record to make it more aggressive, but lyrically and thematically I didn’t want to dig into the dark side of all this shit we’ve been through.” It’s perhaps no surprise then that Electrified Brain is the sound of MUNICIPAL WASTE doing exactly what they’ve always done best, a rip-roaring ode to riffs, beers and good times all round. This is music made to be shared – the kind that only takes on its truest meaning when you get to experience it in a sweat-soaked room surrounded by as many of your best friends as you can fit in there.
“Nothing beats the feeling of playing music for people that appreciate your band, especially after all the shit we’ve been through,” agrees Foresta. “We’re on tour right now and you can tell people are so fucking stoked. When the lights go on and we’re playing, you just see a room full of fucking smiling faces, or more intense faces, or people that have just been waiting so long to just fucking drop all the bullshit they’ve been lugging around for a long time. That is what keeps us going, there’s camaraderie and there’s just this way of us being together creating something for people to unleash their frustrations on.”
Of course, MUNICIPAL WASTE have always been about bringing people together, refusing to ever squeeze neatly into either of the often disparate worlds of metal or hardcore. Foresta agrees that such tribalism has definitely been on the decline of late, and, like us here at Distorted Sound, he struggles to see any ways in which that could be a bad thing. “Over the years I feel like the lines have been blurred so much,” he emphasises. “Especially nowadays hardcore is exciting because they just don’t give a shit and they’re doing anything the fuck they want to do. I guess it’s how it’s always been in the past, but it seems really noticeable nowadays and it’s exciting because there are so many young bands coming out right now that just fucking rule.”
With at least one eye clearly on the new blood, it seems only fair that we ask Foresta if he has any advice for such up and comers after his many years in the industry. Naturally, he obliges, “What I always like to say to younger bands is before you sign a record contract or do anything like that, do a little bit of research. If you’re out on the road, and you meet bands that are on the label that’s approaching you, ask them about [it]. No matter how cool you think a band is or how snobby you think they are or whatever, I bet if you go up to them and ask them about their label or a former label and you tell them that they’re approaching you, they will sit your ass down and have a great conversation with you.”
For all his experience though, there’s a sense that Foresta is still just as stoked about all this as he has been on day one, and, as he looks to the future with a sort of open-ended optimism, we can’t help feeling that whatever’s next for MUNICIPAL WASTE will be just as good as what came before. “We’re definitely going to give this cycle for the record the run for its money and work our fucking asses off, but who knows?” he concludes. “Ryan‘s writing a movie script, I have a couple of business things going on. We’ve always been pretty creative people. Dave has a vegan restaurant, Phil’s doing eight million projects. We’re all just out there doing a tonne of different shit, but I just trust my bandmates that it will be cool and creative and that we’ll still be here in one creative form or another for a really long time.”
Electrified Brain is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.
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