THIS IS HELL

PHOTO CREDIT: JEREMY SAFFER

‍1. Let me start by saying this is a milestone moment for me, as twenty years ago Sundowning was the album that made me fall in love with modern hardcore, so thank you! I am positive the number of times I’ve seen you guys has to be in the double-digits (Worcester Palladium Upstairs with Cancer Bats and Gallows; The Landing Zone in Albany with Jerk City and Grave Maker; The Waterfront in Holyoke with Within the Ruins and others; etc etc—can’t remember the years or all the other bands but you get the gist). Right, so with the gushing out of the way, would you please introduce yourself and what you do in the band?

Rick Jimenez, guitar and some vocals, wrestling toy collector, caffeine addict, designated driver, shortest member of any band ever. I love Palladium upstairs.

2. I’m going to structure this interview very similarly to the one I did with another legendary hardcore band that’s also recently made a comeback in London’s TRC (you can read that interview here) in terms of going chronologically up to the return for context and simply because I’m interested as well! Let’s go to the very beginning: What was it about hardcore that attracted you to it in the first place? What bands were foundational influences on you?

It was the music first and foremost that grabbed my attention, but it was the community and the mindset that transcended. I was a metal kid first, then found punk, then found hardcore. I never dropped interest in any musical genre, but the values that were extremely prevalent in MY upbringing in hardcore is what turned it into something more. There’s an enlightenment that was attached to it. (From my POV at least). When I first got into hardcore, it was antithetical to a lot of what I had experienced in other genres ideal-wise. In metal in the 90’s, it was very competitive and seemingly old guy oriented. Even if the bands and musicians were only 2-4 years older than I was, everyone was very “I’ve been doing this for X years and I don’t watch other bands and I know Jimmy Dipshit from insert big time venue here.” In the local punk scene in the 90’s, it was way better than the metal scene, but there was an element of “yeah we’re all in shitty bands that 10 people or less even like, but I’m way more punk than you so you’re just not cool enough.” Again, these are not only small bubbles within small bubbles that I’m talking about, but also my POV as a young teenager, so who knows if any of this is even factual, or just how I interpreted the events at the time. Either way, once I started to discover the nuanced differences between hardcore, punk and metal, became more active in the hardcore scene and started to absorb what was going on, it all finally clicked. Hardcore maybe didn’t CHANGE the way I thought of the world but it changed the way I did or did not fit into it, and it opened my eyes to what I want out of the world, what I want out of my own life and how my mindset and my core values would support that. Foundational influences were Minor Threat and Sick of it All band-wise, Deja One and Tramps venue-wise, Center of Zero and Domain friendship and local scene-wise.

3. This Is Hell was born from the ashes of some successful and quite good bands in their own right (Scraps and Heart Attacks, The Backup Plan, others?); can you walk us up to and through the formation of the band and the recording of the 2004 demo?

Long story as short as possible, I was playing in a band called Subterfuge for years with Johnny Moore who eventually joined This is Hell. Once that ended we started a new band called Thieves and Assassins. Fuge played with Scraps and Backup Plan all the time and quickly Thieves did as well. The idea came up to grab some people from each band and do another band for fun. We got together a few times, wrote the first demo, recorded it and made some CDR’s for the fun of it. There was a basement show with Backup Plan, Scraps and Thieves all playing when the demo had just come out so we decided to play a few songs being that we were all there. That was May of 2004. Scraps and Backup Plan were popular on Long Island and touring around the states. Subterfuge was popping before we broke up and Thieves was really new and kinda getting started, but there was something special-feeling about TIH from the start. We quickly went from “fuck around for fun and make a demo” to “yeah, let’s go on tour and try to make this a thing we can do all the time.” We went through some trials and tribulations between existing bands, rotating lineups, other people’s hurt feelings and the like in the first few months, but by December, it was the original 5 guys hitting the road through North America and Europe on a demo.

4. I remember reading you guys were hitting like two hundred dates a year or something insane like that during this era. What were some of the highlights of the pre-Trustkill era, including the 2005 self-titled EP, and how did the relationship with Josh from Trustkill ultimately form?

From September of 2004 through June 2013, This is Hell never took a real break. I remember in 2008 we were home for most of the summer and it was the strangest thing in the world. It seemed like an eternity. But that 2005 era you’re asking about specifically, everything was a different level. It wasn’t HUGE SHOWS, MONEY, CRAZY WILDNESS different level, but it was “there’s definitely excited people at every show” different. People liked the demo and liked the EP. People wanted to buy t-shirts and let us sleep at their houses and came to 3 shows in a row and we’d see them consistently when we passed through town. All of that stuff was new. To me at least. I was still used to “I hope some people show up to the show and stick around for us. Maybe we’ll sell 4 shirts instead of 1. Hope we can find a place to sleep tonight that isn’t a wet warehouse filled with litter boxes” from my other bands. We still wound up in situations like that but it was WAY less. During that time we wound up with lots of friends in and out of bands. We clicked with a bunch of bands that we’d play shows with for years. Outbreak, Hollywood, Cancer Bats, Comeback Kid, Stretch Armstrong, Another Breath, Blacklisted and tons more, were all from that era. In my mind at least, thats how I remember it. Even stupid things were so exciting back then like “check out this tour laminate Jeff made for us for this tour!” Like we needed fucking laminates to access the backdoor of the VFW or something… but it was fun and the spirit of it all wasn’t to look cool or self importance, it was enjoying traveling with buds all the time and playing music that we were psyched out of our mind on. I mean, that’s STILL the point of it all, just with less traveling because some of these people are pretending to be adults. Wimps.

5. Sundowning came out in 2006 and truthfully—not trying to gas you up, although it is as I stated before personally significant for me as—I would call it a classic. It’s the Golden Ratio of melodic to metallic, it’s got great lyrics, riffs, and what I call “contextual breakdowns”—really it’s like the perfect mix of anything a hardcore and/or metalcore fan could want. What was the writing and recording process like and what were some highlights from this era?

Contexual breakdown is great to me because context is EVERYTHING to me. Across all facets of life, context is so uber important to me, but music specifically. So much so that it bothers certain people I play music with. The sickest riff in the world needs the right context to mean anything. Same thing with a breakdown, a guitar solo, a certain drum fill, a lyric, a vocal pattern etc etc. I appreciate your appreciation of that because I LABOR over stuff like that.

The writing process for Sundowning was just a natural spillover from the EP. The writing never stops for me. Some of the stuff that made it onto Sundowning pre-dates the EP and a lot of it was written directly after. Depending on how deep you want to go into what went into the music of the album, it was in some ways the ultimate culmination of everything I had absorbed up until that point put through the very specific lens of the time. Once it gets meshed with Travis’s vocals, Jeff’s lyrics, Dean’s production and everyone else’s 2 cents and performances on the record, it becomes something else. I didn’t have this grandiose mission statement for the record, but I DID have a vision of how I thought it should start, how it should end and the peaks and valleys it should hit. There’s obvious hints of Sick of it All in there. American Nightmare, The Hope Conspiracy. Some less obvious notes of Youth of Today, Cro-Mags, Descendents. And then some I KNOW THIS, BUT UNSURE IF ANYONE ELSE CAN SENSE IT tinges of Queensryche, Metallica, Def Leppard. Being able to add melody and harmony over breakneck hardcore riffs, a bit of tightness to a generally loose sound, saving a breakdown until the time is right as opposed to abusing a song with it… all of these things were thought out to me and extremely gratifying at the time to actualize. When it really comes down to it, though, I think what ACTUALLY makes these songs are the lyrics and the vocal patterns. As far as what made it to people’s ears sonically, Jeff Tiu was the MVP in those early days. I don’t think the selling point of This is Hell’s music was “oh, wasn’t it cool that Rick played those extra notes on the second song when the other guitar took a rest?!?!”

6. I remember you stating at that Palladium gig that you guys went on a lot of “weird tours”—what were some of the stranger bills you were on? I know it was kind of the era for that, as I’ve heard Vincent from The Acacia Strain say something similar about their experiences in the 2000s.

We were always up for playing with bands outside of the hardcore bubble. We did shows and tours that were fringing the bubble, like Glassjaw and Bring Me The Horizon and then others that were just so outside the bubble that we would be viewed as Cannibal Corpse, like Bayside or Funeral For A Friend. On the other end of the spectrum, we did Sounds of the Underground with a bunch of deathcore bands and Goatwhore after we released Misfortunes. I don’t think we came across like Blink 182 on that tour, but that was before we started to lean more into metal on our records, so we were kinda sore thumbs there, too. At the time, though, it was “hey, we love playing to anyone that wants to hang out and everyone is welcome to be a part of this so long as you’re not a dopey dumbass with a garbage brain.” We’re still in that mindset actually.

7. Congratulations on one of the best-named tours of all time in the Four Bands One Cup Tour. I can’t remember which era this was in, but can you give us some highlights around 2008’s follow-up in Misfortunes?

I’m glad you liked that tour name because I remember vividly when Travis sent me the admat for that and my utter disdain for it. I love having fun and I love laughing, but that bummed me out so hard because the conflict of what was going on in hardcore/metalcore vs. what the band was doing on that album. The silly pastel side of metalcore was always a detractor to me, but especially in contrast to how weighty topically and musically Misfortunes is. Now to be fair, I was going through some stuff at the time of that album’s creation as well as the support of it, but I also look back at certain times in my life (this time being one of them) and realize “whoa dude, you take yourself WAY too fucking seriously sometimes, chill the fuck out a little bit, then chill the fuck out a little bit more.” Misfortunes had a new This is Hell lineup with the addition of Chris Reynolds on second guitar and Johnny Moore on bass as well as the main lyric writer. Johnny was in Subterfuge and Thieves and Assassins with me as well as my best friend since we were 5. I wrote some lyrics for the album, but mostly I wrote the music and John would instinctually know what the song was about, and off we’d go. There was not just such a specific theme and mood to the record, but also this idea of doing something more encompassing. Not a concept album, but a cohesion even more than Sundowning. That wound up leading to the opposite of what EVERYONE thought we would do next. Fans, label, press… everyone. Between the moderate success, or at least buzz, that Sundowning got, along with the genre jumping tours that we were doing, we were later told that everyone thought we would streamline the sound even more and do something more poppy or accessible. What everyone got was an absolutely abrasive sounding, depression soaked, 42 minutes of bashed over the head aggression with longer songs and musical trilogies. It’s interesting looking back at that record because it wasn’t well received at the time but people have developed an appreciation for it in retrospect. That time in my life overall was all over the place so I have conflicting thoughts about it. Sometimes I wish I had edited the songs a bit more, made some different choices about the recording, had some more concrete ideas across the board, was less headstrong about “business decisions” or non-music decisions. On the other hand, writing a record with my best friend again, touring the world with him and the other dudes, being completely unfazed by the expectations of others when it comes to creation, successfully using music as an outlet for such dark times… that stuff I look back on and am so proud of.

My favorite tour of 2008 though was the Last Days Campaign run. That was the release tour for Misfortunes with Elysia, Ruiner and Soldiers (my other band at the time). Shit was so rad playing twice every night and sharing a van between two bands where we shared members so it was actually only one extra person being that Audley was already TIH’s tour manager at that time.

8. In 2010 you released your third LP Weight of the World on Rise Records and it built on the stylistic shift of the year previous’s Warbirds 7” in terms of really leaning into crossover and more of a thrash metal influence. What precipitated this sonic evolution/shift?

So my favorite thing about music is Metallica. Always has been. Toward the end of the Misfortunes touring cycle, I was feeling fatigued by hardcore on almost every level. Not just the musical stylings, (because to me at least, we always spread our wings anyway), but the scene politics (which is such a ridiculous thing to exist enough to use that phrase) and the direction I saw things going at the time. Naturally I just started gravitating back to what first got me siked on music in a serious way when I was younger. Metallica, Slayer, Testament, Iron Maiden, Sepultura. I had already started writing for the Misfortunes follow up record, and it was 3 or 4 songs of Misfortunes sounding songs. Then a more crossover song emerged. Then another. Then another. Eventually I ditched the first few songs and went full bore into crossover territory. Pretty soon it was just “hey, finished writing the new album and this is what it sounds like.” Everything felt fresh again. I feel like from early 2007-early 2009, it was dark, grey and raining. Then the sun came out. The music sounded like the sun came out, the lyrics felt like the sun came out. An evolution of sound, a new label, a new studio. We went to California to record, which felt so appropriate for what we were doing musically. This was also the first TIH record where I was writing most of the lyrics. To be honest, I don’t even know if this was a period where we were or were not popular, but it was so much fun. Benny from Dead Swans had taken over on drums and he is probably my favorite drummer to play with as well as one of my favorite freaks to ever have been unleashed on this planet. Johnny had left the band to do solo music and was replaced by Andrew, who was in Backup Plan and Soldiers. Everything was different but in a great way. Not that one era was better than the last, but the change was needed across the board. I love that time period and I love that album.

9. There’s a certain “Rise-core” sound associated with this era, though obviously there have been and are plenty of Rise bands that don’t have that sound. Did you feel like black sheep at all given that reputation or did it not matter given the extensive stage-sharing with all types of artists? What went into the decision to go with Rise?

We were always the black sheep no matter what situation we were in and I think that’s the way we liked it. I should actually restate that: it’s the way I like it. Going back to what drew me to hardcore outside of the music, it was the community, but that’s a community of black sheep. That’s obviously an oxymoron if you aren’t in the bubble, and the perfect explanation if you are in the bubble. The decision to go with Rise was “this label has a big reach and the best way to perpetuate playing music as the main goal of life, is to have a label that will expose us to as many people as possible.” The dudes there gave us a great deal and were really nice as well, despite the fact that there is no way they were gonna make money off of This is Hell. Or the fact that when we had our first meeting, they were dressed really nice and had an extremely professional office and conference room that I entered with no shirt on, sweaty as hell and wearing a pair of locs. Probably was more of “eww, what is this greazy PR no-name scumbag doing here like this?” and less “really cool guns and roses-like story from behind the music because they were so badass!” like it has lived in my mind, but hey, it was 2009 and that’s where my head was at back then, especially when it came to business-y things. Funny thing about that, I think we played at a pizza place that night with a pop-punk band, despite being on our early crossover trip. Life is funny.

10.  What would you say were the highlights of this era, including the year following’s even more overtly thrashy (and really good by the way) Black Mass?

Black Mass is a funny origin story. I wrote the music for that whole album during a short stint home between tours and solely for myself. I had this fantasy of going full on thrash and possibly starting a new band, but figured it was just fuck around stuff for myself. Even the working titles for each song were just “Metal01. Metal02. Metal03” etc. When it came time to start working on a new TIH album, I had 3 or 4 different albums written, but none of them for This is Hell. Some of the dudes heard my metal demos and there was a push for that to be the next TIH record. Even with WOTW going the crossover route, I was iffy about it. Vocally the stuff was pushing it for TIH, lyrically it was very different, the guitars were tuned down from Eb to D… all stuff that was causing me to say “this just isn’t TIH.” Once I actually said it like that, it was immediately “oh, that’s exactly why we SHOULD just do this.” In retrospect, it’s the not just the obvious, but the perfect evolution for the band. Again, it was like an ultra-refresh for us. With the sound change being so distinct, we had so much fun diving into the metal thing. Like I said already, that’s what I was brought up on. We had a lineup shake up towards the end of WOTW and the addition of Scuzz and Pete was bringing two metal guys in also, so we were rolling into all the shit that we weren’t before. We were doing hardcore tours still and metalcore tours still but we started doing metal shows and festivals and runs and playing in front of crowds that had never even heard of us before. It was a mindfuck touring the world from 2004-2011 and then playing to all new people that think we’re a brand new band in 2012. It went from “well, I’m the only guitar player in the band so here’s my amp and cabinet” to “fuck it, I’m doing solos, abusing my wah pedal and the whammy bar, I’m gonna play out of two full stacks. Pete, wanna play two bass cabs also and we’ll make the stage symmetrical? Let’s get a bigger backdrop being that we’re playing larger stages.” None of it was ego or big dicking, it was just having as much fun as possible while playing bitchin music. Eventually, Pete would sometimes move to second guitar and we brought in Tom Wood to play bass so we could do a full 5 piece band. The last year or so as an active band with the 5 of us, that was some of the best times.

11. We get a pair of releases in 2013’s The Enforcer EP and 2016’s Bastards Still Remain, and then no releases for nearly a decade until last year’s “Born Suspicious” and this year’s “Don’t Wreck Your Life” (my emphasis added)—bringing it full-circle in so many ways: to the demo, to a sound that hews more closely to the early days, and to Trustkill as the label that will be releasing the Born Suspicious EP on May 15th. A lot of ground to cover here I know, but walk us through this timeline and the decision to revive the band and take it in this direction.

The Enforcer EP was a few songs from the next big batch of songs I was working on, (the song The Enforcer was with Pete as well) but we chose to jump in quick and bang out something to release before we went back to Australia and the UK if memory serves. I think we were about to start shopping for a new label as well. I believe we were pretty busy touring for the first chunk of the year but I was getting fatigued again. Not with playing, not with the dudes, just with the baggage that started to creep up again with being a band on this constant conveyer belt of “record, tour, record, tour, record, tour… oh but you’re just This is Hell, didn’t you used to be a hardcore band? Oh, you’re just a metal band now. Oh, are you guys a new band? Yeah, I saw you guys 5 years ago with Bane, you can’t play with Death Angel.” Obviously, that’s our own “fault” for genre jumping essentially every single full length. And it’s also an already antiquated way of thinking. The 2013 music business mindset is SO different from the 2026 version. But either way, shit was getting old to me and my excitement was waning. On top of that, the new batch of songs I was working on was going even further metal stylistically and I was getting super itchy for NEW NEW NEW. I wanted to take a break from This is Hell and start something ground up so we decided that the show we had at home (Long Island FEST 2013) would be our last show for a while and we’d come back to it when we felt like it. We only told a few people. No break up, no announcement, just our own terms like we essentially have done everything since May 2004. About a week later I announced my new band Extinction A.D. and we played our first show August 2013. Never did the “Extinction A.D. - ex-members of This is Hell” thing. It made its way onto a flyer or 2 early on by happenstance but it was a fresh start from the jump. We actually missed a few awesome opportunities early on because we were so (somewhat regretfully, now) stubborn about NOT basing interest of XAD on This is Hell. Our second tour was almost a Biohazard European support slot with the booking agent’s condition that promotion would be “Extinction A.D. - formerly This is Hell” and we said no way. Looking back, we would have went over and played our set with an XAD backdrop behind us playing XAD songs and selling XAD shirts so who gives a shit, but at the time, it was a bogus way to get attention to the band and also shitting on what TIH was. So yeah, maybe I don’t regret it because it wasn’t the right way to do things… I love Biohazard though and it took us another 4 or 5 years to get to Europe with XAD so who knows.

Anyway, in 2016 Travis brought up the idea of doing a 10 year anniversary shirt for Sundowning and I said “hey, I have another idea. Why don’t we tease that something is coming May 16, 2016 and everyone will assume we’re gonna do a Sundowning show, but instead we release a new album. I have an album written for us, we can write some lyrics, I’ll teach the record to the dudes and we’ll bang out the whole thing in one day at the studio and bam, bob’s your uncle.” That’s how I remember it at least. I had 11 or 12 stripped down hardcore songs ready to go and was super excited about not just doing a surprise TIH record after a 3 year hiatus but also one that was super punk oriented across the board. It’s the most 80’s hardcore album TIH has ever done. There is close to nothing better than early 80’s American hardcore. We recorded with Rat from I am The Avalanche, linked up with Coin Toss Records and the whole thing was simple. Coin Toss is probably one of the best labels we ever worked with. Everything was so easy and transparent and whenever I get those ASCAP or little royalty statements, it’s ALWAYS majority from Coin Toss. It’s small because we’re a no name band and no one makes money from music in real life, but the fact that every so often TIH royalties will pay for my weekly run to the comic shop or a Zombie Sailor Toys action figure at all, let alone from the surprise EP we released in 2016 is amazing and something that I will never not be grateful as well as give props to Indy from Coin Toss for. That’s some real dude brother shit as opposed to slimey stooge crap that plagues the industry possibly more now than it did in the Posion days.

2 years after the release of Bastards, we agreed to do a benefit show which quickly sold out. So we added another show the next day where we’d do Sundowning in full. Then we got asked to do that in Montreal at a fest. Then another show came up. Then we piggy backed a This is Hell UK tour with an XAD UK tour. I started working on new TIH music because we were playing more and I was quickly not wanting to only play solely for nostalgia. Once the pandemic hit I was writing music constantly for a trillion different projects. Once things opened up again and we played another show or two I put the edict out “if more shows, then new record.” So away we went again. Timing coincided, Trustkill re-emerged and now “Born Suspicious” is about to be a reality outside of my iTunes and into everyone’s ears and hopefully hands. We wound up with artwork by Ilias Kyriazis who is an unbelievable artist and works in the comic book industry. I had a very specific concept for the cover and was struggling to execute it or even explain it to someone more capable, until we were introduced to Ilias. I may be more excited by the cover than I am the actual music. In the beginning I thought it would be clever to write a 5 song EP and have each song sound like it could have been on each of our five albums, but I quickly dropped that idea because it wasn’t genuine. I can do stuff like that when it’s someone else’s band or project I’m working on, but not for This is Hell or any of my passions. It just became “we’re playing with This is Hell sometimes after not for a few years, so I’ll sit down and write something for This is Hell” and the Born Suspicious EP is what that is… modern This is Hell. I like it.

12. Following the EP’s release you’ll be playing with Defeater in New York. What can you tell us about that show, as well as where you see things going with the band in the future?

Defeater has been a brother band to us for essentially ever. We knew we wanted to do a show and have buds but also something special that you won’t see a month or two later if you miss this show. Defeater was perfect. We have some new friends and old friends as well in Neks and Pound 4 Pound. It’ll be a celebration of music and community whether it’s empty off stage or sold out as hell.

The future… no surprise; I have a new record written for us. When will it ever come to fruition, if at all? Who knows. I know I’ll push it and push it because I love to create and I think this shit cracks skulls more than anything else, but I always think that. If you don’t think what you do next isn’t better than what you did last, why bother?