The Menzingers: The Only Constant…

“We grew up expecting to go to work; everyone we knew did and that’s the way that we lived and that’s how we’ve treated the band.” This is the mentality that has guided Tom May and the rest of THE MENZINGERS for the better part of two decades now, and it’s certainly served them well. The four of them – May, fellow guitarist/vocalist Greg Barnett, bassist Eric Keen and drummer Joe Godino – have held down the same line-up since the beginning and they’ve released all but two of their albums on the punk rock juggernaut that is Epitaph Records. They’re also one of the increasingly few groups one comes across nowadays that does this full time, and all this has yielded a truly special bond among a truly special group of musicians.

“I would even use the word telepathy,” smiles May. “I can’t prove it with any type of quantifiable result, but being in the room together, whether it’s practice or playing together for so long or knowing what somebody’s going to do, or even something as imperceptible as smells or body language on such a low level, we really do have an ability to make things that are choreographed in a way that they resonate very deeply at an emotional level without consciously saying them out loud. I really think that there’s some subtle action that happens between us after doing it all these years that makes that work.”

This is exactly the kind of energy the band wanted to tap into for their seventh full-length album Some Of It Was True, which at the time of our chat is about a month away from its arrival via – you guessed it – Epitaph Records. Mostly recorded live and in the room under the guidance of producer Brad Cook, the album sees THE MENZINGERS stripping as far back to their core as they could. “As far as the amount of layering and the amount of things that are on the record that have been recorded – the amount of tracks – it’s the lowest of any record that we’ve ever done,” explains May. “It sounds huge and I think that’s because that space is taken up by each thing and it’s like a true rock ‘n’ roll punk rock record.”

A big emphasis, May adds, was not to “overcook” things, allowing little imperfections to find their way into the mix rather than exhausting themselves on endless takes and tweaks. He agrees that it makes for arguably their most mature record to date, and his co-frontman Barnett has already gone on record as saying that it feels like the most realised version of what the band set out to do when they started out 17 years ago. “The beginning of our career was a lot of explosions of energy and copycatting other artists that we were around and kind of trying to find our place and in a sense our voice,” elaborates May. “As we’ve gotten older, I feel like we’ve gotten the experience and thus a little bit of the wisdom to be able to articulate what we want to do instead of just doing it.”

Indeed, Some Of It Was True often finds THE MENZINGERS in quite a reflective mood. “The older I get the less I know, and I knew nothin’ then” sings Barnett in the title track, for example, with May again expanding on his bandmate’s words: “If you can finally embrace the unknowns and bring in a curiosity, I think that’s the way that you increase your surface area for luck, and that you can maintain deeper and more harmonious relationships, and get through it… really what we’ve learned is how to maintain and work with each other, and at its core level, we’re still winging it and trying new things, but we’ve definitely learned that the only constant is change.”

Change, and maybe May and Barnett’s uncanny knack for capturing so much of the human experience – everything from the beautiful to the mundane – in their lyrics. The duo’s vulnerable and vivid storytelling is almost certainly the main thing that has endeared THE MENZINGERS so much to so many over the years, but if they do ever feel any pressure to ‘mean something’ to their listeners, May insists that it can only ever be a positive.

“I think it’s pressure to be better at what we’re doing,” he suggests. “Also it keeps you in mind of the higher purpose of what we’re doing… essentially going from city to city and playing songs and putting on a show that makes people feel good about themselves and lets people not always just escape the parts of their life that they don’t like but actually meet up with their friends and have a good time and relate to this music and these lyrics that make them feel better about their lives. Just keeping that simple thing in mind allows you to cut out a lot of the bullshit and the other parts of being in a band and also it allows you to have focus and purpose.”

“I like it when people take away stuff that we didn’t intend or think of out loud,” he continues, concluding with a reflection on what he hopes that listeners will take away from Some Of It Was True. “A lot of times people will come up with their own theories, and their own kind of stories and themes, like they’ll write on Genius Lyrics, or we’ll see people come up to us at shows and say things. So I guess what I hope they take away from it is to think a little bit more deeply about them. It’s awesome to just have a lot of fun and dance and shit – that’s just as cool – but what I hope people take away is a little bit of exploration of their life in this moment.”

Some Of It Was True is out now via Epitaph Records.

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