Before the rest of Against Me! takes the Bonnaroo stage, frontmanTom Gabel approaches the microphone and begins strumming the chords to “Amputations”. With the election right around the corner, the song’s plaintive refrain of “What kind of future are you promising us?” seems particularly important. It is with the election in mind that Tom Gabel began penning a new batch of material for Against Me!’s followup to 2007’s critically acclaimed New Wave.
We caught up with Tom before Against Me! played a blistering set that left both hippies and punks awestruck. The calm before the storm so to speak. Tom was nice enough to fill us in on the Foo Fighters tour, the New Wave deluxe package soon to be released, and most importantly, the songs he’s been writing for the new Against Me! record.
Grooveshark: How was the Foo Fighters tour?
Gabel: It was very awesome. We actually last week went over and played
with them at Weembly in London.
Grooveshark: Was that the show where John Bonham and Jimmy Page played?
Gabel: They did two nights and the 2nd night was the one John Bonnam
and Jimmy Page got up there.
Grooveshark: I saw recently you got a blog, what inspired you to do that?
Gabel: I don’t know. I kind of just write all the time and it had been something I’d been thinking about for a while but I’m very weary of the word “blog” itself. I kind of hate it, so I was looking at it as something more of an online journal. This summer during the Warped Tour since there’s so much down time I was looking for some constructive things to do with my time as opposed to smoking weed and drinking, you know?
Grooveshark: I saw that Fargo records is doing a deluxe edition of New Wave with 5 bonus tracks on there…what do those sound like?
Gabel: They were recorded during the same time when we were doing New Wave. They were just the kinda songs we felt didn’t fit the record and wanted to save them. We’ve already released 3 of them as B-Sides on our 7″s that we have on sale with us here. Warner France decided
not to release New Wave at the last minute. So we’re like, “Fuck there is no label
that’s introducing New Wave in France!” So then Fargo came along and asked to do it. In the interest that it’s already out in all the surrounded countries we wanted to give them something special.
Grooveshark: I also saw that you’ve been writing new songs. How do they sound compared to New Wave and when can we expect a new Against Me! album?
Gabel:I don’t know! It’s weird, I don’t really know what to do with
the stuff. I’ve found that lately I’ve been writing a lot of stuff thats focused around the topic of the election and everything and I feel like if it doesn’t come out before the election it misses
the point and isn’t really relevant anymore. So there is some stuff that I’d really like to get out before the election. Definitely the first time I’ve written stuff without the band and come back and
demoed it for them and said how I want this stuff to be.
Grooveshark: How did they react to it?
Gabel: They were into it. I mean not all the songs are tailor made for a
band and some of the stuff goes in an acoustic direction.
Grooveshark: Are you guys gonna stick around and see some sets at Bonnaroo?
Gabel: We’re leaving at 2AM so we’re gonna see what we can!
Listen: Thrash Unreal
Listen: White People For Peace
Photos by Tyler Dunn.
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