AN INTERVIEW WITH ESCALATE

1. From the City of Queens, one of the 2023 European Capitals of Culture, and a UNESCO City of Music, All the Cores and More welcomes Escalate! Would you be so kind as to introduce yourself and what you do in the band?

Wow, you really did your research! I’m Laszlo, vocalist of Escalate, a vegan straight edge band.

2. Can you give us some background on how the band came together?

We’d known each other for quite some time before starting Escalate, but we were all playing in different punk/hardcore, powerviolence, and neocrust bands. I wanted to start a vegan straight edge band for the first time in Hungary’s history and push that message with a metallic hardcore sound, even if no one gave a shit about it, so I asked the guys to help me bring my ideas to the stage. We had a few lineup changes in the early stages, but the current one is the lineup everyone knows today as Escalate.

3. Why veganism, why straight edge, and why hardcore?

We’ve all been vegan straight edge for well over a decade now, and we wanted these voices to be heard in our scene too, because as I said, there had never been a vegan straight edge band here before, and it had also been a while since we had any straight edge bands. It was really important for us from the beginning to keep things political as well.

And it had to be a hardcore band. This is the scene we come from, and we care about shaping it first and foremost. We wanted to bring these values to the table so everyone could have a chance to connect with them and with like-minded people through them.

4. Before we get deeper into the interview, I’m curious as to what some of your influences are and how you got into hardcore in the first place.

I think it would be a really long list if I wanted to mention every band and artist that influenced us, but for Escalate specifically, bands like Foundation, Earth Crisis, Gather, Sanction, and xRepentancex are among the biggest ones.

But of course, I didn’t get into hardcore through those bands. I started skateboarding when I was about 12, and all the older kids were listening to bands like Pennywise and AFI. I remember getting some tracks where AFI covered Negative Approach and the Misfits, and that kind of started it all. From there we explored the ’80s hardcore bands and then discovered this whole new and exciting scene.

5. What’s the hardcore scene like in Hungary?

I think it’s in a good place right now. When we first got into it around 2003–2004, the scene was much bigger, but it wasn’t as tight or supportive as it is now, or at least it didn’t feel that way to me at the time.

We try to keep it as inclusive as possible while still keeping our values intact. People are a lot more open-minded about different subgenres now, so you’ll see an overlapping crowd moshing at one show and then singing along to an underground pop-punk band, which feels really healthy.

6. What have been the major highlights of the band so far?

The first one was definitely when Ugly and Proud Records reached out to release our demo on tape. The label isn’t around anymore, but we’re still friends with Niki and very grateful for his support.

The second one is connected to him as well: he lives in Bulgaria, and there’s a DIY hardcore/punk fest there every year called May Day Fest. Thanks to him, we got on the bill and were able to go on our first weekender abroad.

Another highlight was when Niki decided to call it quits with the label and we had to look for a new home to release the LP we were working on at the time. We reached out to Mike, and he agreed to release it on the legendary New Age Records, that was a dream come true.

Then, thanks to these connections, last year we were lucky enough to tour all over Europe and the UK with our friends and labelmates Life Force and Moral Law.

7. In April, your EP The Cry of Nature will be released via New Age Records. Can you elaborate on how that relationship came about?

Our label at the time decided to retire and focus on other things in life, so we had to figure something out. We thought: why not make a list of labels we’d like to work with and just hit them up one by one? What’s the worst thing they could say?

New Age Records was the first one on that list. I wrote to Mike, told him who we were, what our situation was, and why we’d like to work with him, sharing the same values was the most important thing for us. After a few emails back and forth, he agreed, and the rest is history.

8. What was the writing and recording process for the EP like? What can listeners expect?

I’d say it was a lot more organic than ever before. We learned a lot from the writing and recording process of the LP, and I think I can say that over the years we’ve found our sound, so listeners can expect that, but on steroids, haha.

Generally speaking, the process was the same as it has been from the beginning. I wrote the lyrics and the music, and then we put everything together during band practice and fine-tuned it as a group.

The recording was a bit different this time. Our guitarist, Andras Timar, recorded everything at our rehearsal space, so we could really experiment throughout the whole process and try different things until we felt we got it right, without feeling like we were being judged for taking too much time with something.

After that, we sent the raw recordings to Taylor Young to mix and Brad Boatright to master, and they did an amazing job, as you’d expect from them.

9. In May you’ll be having your record release show in Budapest (I’ll paste the flyer below) with support from labelmates Supernova and Sharp Tongues (I reviewed Sharp Tongues’ last record when I was doing my previous site, so it was cool to see a “familiar face,” if you will, on the flyer!), fellow Hungarians Defied, and Americans Time X Heist. What can you tell us about that show, and do you have any others lined up to promote?

It’s going to be at our favorite DIY place in Budapest, which a friend from California once described as “like 924 Gilman Street when it was cool,” so you get the idea.

We’ll have Time X Heist over for the third time now, and together with them, Supernova, and Sharp Tongues we’ll be heading to Munich Edge Fest the day after. So it seemed like the perfect excuse to bring all these bands together in our country and also have our EP release show.

So yeah, we can call Munich Edge Fest our international EP release show. Other than that, we have some shows lined up for the rest of the year. I can’t talk about all of them yet, but you’ll definitely be able to catch us in different parts of Europe.

10. Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions! Any last words for the reader?

Go vegan. Stay vegan. And it’s still fucking Free Palestine.