Courtesy American Overdose
Audio By Carbonatix
Denver hardcore outfit American Overdose has been regularly packing local shows in the short time since the four-piece formed. However, the band has also inadvertently discovered how quickly it can clear out a room.
With an official tagline of “We don’t like cops or capitalism,” the group has never been shy about sharing its opinions on stage. The bandmates recall an outing in guitarist Tyler Shilling’s hometown of Casper, Wyoming, during which vocalist Walt Mothman dedicated a song to Nicholas Gutierrez – a 22-year-old who crashed his vehicle into a training group of 75 police recruits, injuring 25, in Whittier, California, last November, after falling asleep at the wheel.
“There was a case where some guy in California mowed down a line of LAPD who were out jogging,” Mothman says. “We dedicated a song to him. The crowd was not receptive. The crowd, including Tyler’s dad, stormed out.”
Mothman and Shilling, as well as drummer Jason Brooks and bassist Matt Luke, still chuckle at the visceral reaction such an homage caused, but that’s what American Overdose does.
“The best part was we were only the second band,” Shilling explains, adding that Montana punk group Goners UK were set to headline the gig. “They weren’t even upset. They’re always like, ‘Fuck, yeah.’ They thought that shit was hilarious.”
The song American Overdose played is called “Even Cops Hate Cops” and it’s a “Chris Dorner ode,” Mothman explains. Dorner, he adds, was a former LAPD officer who committed a series of fatal revenge shootings in 2013, subsequent to the department terminating him after he reported a partner’s use of excessive force.
If all of that doesn’t make American Overdose’s politics crystal clear, consider that Mothman and Shilling met at a Denver Communists get-together before Mothman officially joined the band.
“He mentioned how he needed a vocalist. I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll yell about how much I hate cops. I can do that,'” Mothman recalls.
Passionate political stances aren’t exclusive to hardcore music, but the subgenre has always provided an adequate platform for pissed-off people with something to say.
“I think hardcore, at least the way I see it, has always been built around a community. I feel like that almost naturally forms into people who have strong messages in politics,” Luke says. “It’s always been part of it, and the aggression. It’s really easy to be mad about a lot of things.”
Mothman adds, “Any genre that rejects a commercialized culture is going to have a disproportionate amount of poor people in it who are going to be pretty pissed off at their state of affairs.”
That’s a valued emotion to experience, Shilling says, and hardcore helps many listeners process it. “I see it [as] positive, because we live in a pretty angry culture,” he adds. “I think anger is a valued emotion to have surrounding certain things, but in this setting of community, like Matt said, it’s not an anger directed at each other; it’s a collective anger directed at something.”
American Overdose is opening for The Bronx, presented by Channel 93.3’s Punk Tacos, Friday, May 12, and Saturday, May 13, at Globe Hall. Local punk trio Egoista is also on the bill both nights.
While American Overdose is serious about the issues that have inspired songs like the five on its EP Capital Tragedy, Mothman admits his lyrics can be a little tongue-in-cheek.
“It’s never hard for me to find something that makes me say, ‘Yeah, it pisses me off enough to write a song.’ We wrote a song about copper theft, and within ten minutes I had lyrics,” he explains, adding that sometimes the songwriting process requires “staring at a wall and just thinking for a long time, and throwing out fifteen drafts before I finally have something I like.”
“I like to couch really serious issues in humor,” he continues. “When I’m singing about how much I hate developers pricing out neighborhoods, that comes out as me encouraging people to steal copper from development yards. Themes like this is really how I communicate a lot of my political beliefs.”
Even the band’s name is an example of that ethos. As Luke explains, Brooks played in a group called Overdose America before he moved from California to Denver.
“We kind of took that and put a political spin on it – just the idea that we’ve been weighed down by capitalism and nationalism to a point of self-destruction in many ways,” he says.
In the grand scheme of things, those with values similar to the American Overdose dudes are in the minority. But being a part of an active and healthy scene like the one in Denver has helped the band find more and more like-minded people.
“Other places, you don’t see that quite as much. Out here, everyone’s just really committed, and we have a really good idea about different things that are fucked up in this world,” Brooks notes. “As it grows, hopefully that message can reach a lot more people.”
American Overdose ultimately exists to make people feel some type of way, as Mothman puts it.
“I want people to walk out of our shows either being amused, motivated or really pissed off, either at the world or at me, I don’t care,” he says. “I want people to champion themselves. I want them to look at whatever industry they work in, find out where the local union hall is and start organizing.”
American Overdose, 8 p.m. Friday, May 12, and Saturday, May 13, Globe Hall, 4483 Logan Street. Tickets are $25.
