"mEMOries" Part 9 feat. Villain of the War

8 years ago, back on the old site, we did start a series called mEMOries. It was all about asking new Emo-bands or other scene affiliates about their all time favourite (Midwest-)Emo-record. It was about nostalgia. And it was about connecting the new with the old. I had big plans for this series, wanted to collect 20 parts and then release some sort of a sampler with an XL-booklet attached, that features all of the text pieces...

...after 7 parts the series was buried, when the end of borderline fuckup 1.0 was on the horizon. I'm still in love with the idea and tried my best to start a relaunch in 2021, but it mainly was a chore. However, I got back on track somehow, with a lot of support by some lovely people. Now, here's part 9 for your reading pleasure!

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// The band // Villain of the War

VILLAIN OF THE WAR hail from Boston, Massachusetts and formed in 2019. They've mostly stuck to live shows in their run, making a name for themselves in the local DIY-scene. In January of 2022 they finally put out a record in the form of "Damn, that's crazy". Check this is EP out, it's one of my favourite releases of the year so far! The four-piece rides the wave of modern Emo, with a lot of diversity, from sad heartbreakers to groovy, scream-y Post-Hardcore. But they took a lot from Midwest-Emo too. Their drummer Sammy DeSantos takes us back to the moment were he fell in love with this certain kind of "style"...

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// The record // Marietta - Summer Death

Release: 2013 // Label: Soft Speak Records

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Sammy DeSantos on "Summer Death" by Marietta

To be honest I didn’t fall in love with the music from DIY punk, Midwest Emo, or whatever you want to call it until I joined Villain of the War. When I first joined the band, I was still cutting my teeth on shit like classic rock and alternative/grunge, the music that my dad was showing me when I started playing music. Villain started around the 2019 spring semester, and we only had a few songs written but still didn’t really know the direction we were going in. I decided when I went back home to Lake Charles, Louisiana for the summer break I needed to find some sort of inspiration.

My homie, Solomon Arcenaux, moved to DC years back but later came back to Lake Charles by the time I started college and he’s been telling me about all these Emo bands he’s been listening to. I went to his house one evening and we just started listening to the records that he wanted to show me. So many bands like Modern Baseball, Mom Jeans., Oso Oso, Charmer, you name it. But the one that really caught my ears was Marietta and their debut LP, “Summer Death.” Track by track it made me feel like shit, but it was okay. I just kept thinking to myself “how the fuck does a record like this sound so good?” The guitar melodies, the lyrics, and the gang vocals. I consider Marietta to be the kings of gang vocals because they overused it but it sounded amazing no matter what. Not only I became obsessed with this record but the band as well even though they were only together for 5 years. I found a video of their very last show they did together and just seeing the energy of both the band and the crowd it literally made me wanna cry because I wasn’t there to witness it.

When I got back to Boston, I showed a lot of the stuff that Solomon showed me (including Marietta) to our singer/bassist/songwriter, Jake Goldstein, who I was living with at the time so we were constantly plugging shit to each other. When I showed him Summer Death, I think we became aware of the direction we wanted to go towards, hence the songs from our EP, “Damn, That’s Crazy” came to be. Another thing I loved about not just Marietta, but a lot of other emo bands is the use of alternate/open tunings. Me and Jake love using alternate tunings. Our guitarists, Mike Walsh and Dan Rogers, hate using them haha. They eventually came around though. I think we realized when we reached our emo sound when I came in with a song idea at a rehearsal and it was the main riff to “Lil Peach.” I remember seeing everyone’s reaction and it was just smiles and hype in the room. Jake was so excited that he literally had lyrics written the next day. ‘Peach’ was definitely one of the songs we all put a lot of input into by sorting out different sections and what not. The big hype moment for me was when Jake told us to drop out on the last bit of the second chorus and he said “that’s where the gang vocals are going to be.” Big Marietta vibes is what I got when we wrote that song. I can’t really speak for Jake, Mike, or Dan on this but personally I don’t think our music would sound the way it is if it weren’t for Summer Death.

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"mEMOries" Part 1 feat. Mosey Jones
"mEMOries" Part 2 feat. Daniel Becker (Time as a Color Records, Amid the Old Wounds)
"mEMOries" Part 3 feat. Former States 
"mEMOries" Part 4 feat. Edie Quinn (Middle-Man Records, Coma Regalia)
"mEMOries" Part 5 feat. Human Hands 
"mEMOries" Part 6 feat. Alex Miles (Is this Thing on?)
"mEMOries" Part 7 feat. Boys' Club
"mEMOries" Part 8 feat. Keith Latinen (Mt. Oriander, Parting)