Interview with Article 15
Rezine: Tell us about your band how did it all start?
Jeff Englehart: I guess you could say that Article 15 actually started as a solo acoustic anarcho-punk project I had back in 2009. Back then it was called Lenny's Reign of Terror, and like I said, it was just me and an acoustic guitar. I was heavily into antiwar activism during that time, and a lot of the songs reflected my experience as an activist and my distaste for the American political system. I mostly played house shows or at activist events where I lived in Denver, Colorado during that time.
In 2010 I moved to Taos, New Mexico for a job working as an administrator for a nonprofit organization that provided free services to military veterans. I continued playing gigs around northern New Mexico, usually as an opener for punk bands traveling through. In 2012, I received a call from a friend saying that there was this drummer guy named Lou who just moved to town and wanted to play punk rock. I was very interested in taking the songs from Lenny's Reign of Terror and expanding on them, turning my acoustic sound into something more aggressive. So I gave Lou a call and we met up. After our first rehearsal we knew this was a direction we wanted to go. We found ourselves a bass player, changed the name to Article 15 (in the interests of creating something distinctive from my old project), starting playing gigs in Taos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque, and eventually recorded the first EP in May 2013.
Rezine: What's the meaning for the name of the band?
Jeff: Article 15 is a military punishment. It's literally "article 15, of the Uniform Code of Military Justice," or UCMJ. It is a legal means of punishing a soldier for even the smallest infraction, but without taking the legal process to a jury trial, or a court-martial. There can be varying degrees of the punishment, but usually it amounts to a soldier losing all of his/her rank, losing a half-month's pay for three consecutive months, and 45 days of hard labor and restriction to that soldier's base. I chose the name of the band for a couple different reasons. One, we thought the name had a pretty cool sound for a punk band, especially if you knew the working class/authoritarian connotations to the term. Second, I was in the army during 9-11 and the War on Terror. Aside from the war, I hated the army and everything it stood for and did everything I could to undermine it. Choosing Article 15 as the name of our anarcho-punk band seemed ironic to me, and a really fun way of saying "fuck you" to the army.
As it turns out, the name has also had a direct-action orientation to our music. There have been many times where veterans and other military service members with similar experiences have approached our band after a show to shake our hands and congratulate us. It seems as though the name is coded in a way that disgruntled soldiers immediately identify with the antiwar/anti-establishment message we're trying to convey, which I think is amazing!
Rezine: Are you a veteran? Did that influence your music?
Jeff: As I mentioned above, yes, I am a veteran of the United States army. I actually joined in 2001, right before 9-11. At that time I was just a dumb, 19-year-old punk kid who was pissed off at the world, but didn't have the politics or social understanding to quantify that angst. I lived in a small town in Colorado and worked at a shitty corporate job. I wanted out, so I volunteered to be a cavalry reconnaissance scout in the army. This was in April 2001. I would eventually be deployed to Kosovo in 2002 and Iraq in 2004.
My military experience absolutely shaped my worldview and politics, which of course finds its expression through our music. Being directly involved with the illegal invasion of Iraq is really what radicalized my thinking. Many of my comrades and I were opposed to the invasion, but were forced into it by our chain of command. Once we were there, we witnessed the brutality of an empire inflicting it's hegemony upon a relatively helpless society. During that time I was ordering books through the mail, such as works from Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and many different publications from AK Press. I needed something, ideologically speaking, to help explain the madness going on around me. How did this happen? Is there something about American society that helps to perpetuate these world crises, or was there an economic explanation? Nothing could really break down these societal disasters in any meaningful way, but it was anarchism that made the most sense to me. Creating a new and better world in the ashes the old.
My war experience really showed me the best and worst of humanity, and it gave me a sense of purpose and mission to get out and protest the war, protest the architects who designed Iraq's destruction. I was just learning how to play guitar at that time, so I'd sit in my barracks room trying to write protest songs, knowing that when I became a civilian again I wanted to be in a band, singing songs like my heroes in Crass, Subhumans, Conflict, Propagandhi, Nausea, Dead Kennedys, etc. In a sense I was ashamed of my participation in the war, but knew that when I did have the freedom to express my views and put my body on the picket lines, I was going to do whatever I could to end the war and fight for social justice. To this day I still feel a sense of duty to speak out against war and empire, especially as a means of finding my own personal redemption.
Rezine: Is it hard to share your opinions?
Jeff: As you can probably tell, I don't find it difficult to share my opinions on these matters (ha-ha). Perhaps I talk too much? I have been known to get into drunken political rants at the pubs that pisses everybody off! I'm pretty open about my war experience, and if someone honestly wants to know what that was like, I'll tell them. Again, I feel as if this is my most important contribution to ending war and confronting an abusive and authoritarian system. I feel that my voice is the most effective weapon in my arsenal. That's why I enjoy being a singer/songwriter. I believe strongly that music is a powerful vessel to carry a message of angst, rebellion, and hope. These days I don't feel threatened for the views conveyed in our music, although while in the army I definitely was a known subversive, and my views and opinions often landed me in trouble (as it turns out, I had two Article 15's during my enlistment!).
I think the hardest adversity we face here in the United States is not retribution for the views we harbor, but rather the feeling that we're shouting to a brick wall. In America, we still have a very big problem with apathy, almost to the point that when one expresses far-left ideas, they are often dismissed as trivial or silly. However, with the rise of far-right American authoritarianism, I feel that that the climate of apathy and complacency on the Left will naturally shift to more action-oriented opposition. I see political punk rock coming back as a means of fighting back against growing fascism, perhaps on a worldwide scale. At least I fucking hope so!
Rezine: What influences the lyrics of your songs?
Jeff: I suppose that there are many factors that take place in influencing our lyrics. Like I said, I feel that there's definitely a mission-driven purpose for the message of our songs. I definitely put more priority on the lyrics than I do on the musical composition, just because I'm in it more for the message than I am for the musical genre. For me, it's hard to sit down and force something out of my head. Often times I'll read a headline in the news or see an act of injustice and it pisses me off. It will run through my head over and over until I finally sit down with a guitar and a pen and really just say what's on my mind. Of course, in a society as fucked as ours is in America, there's never a shortage of influential topics to choose from, be it racist cops, corrupt politicians, sexism, homophobia, the military industrial complex, or living under a capitalist regime that seeks to crush and oppress the poor and working class. Our lyrics are simply a reflection of the madness that is going on all around us.
Rezine: I know how religion can be a touchy subject how did it feel to write the song Mary's Abortion?
Jeff: Religion in America is often a touchy subject, but to me there's no doubt that right wing, ideologically-driven Christians have the upper hand in influencing the political atmosphere in our country. Atheists are truly a minority in the United States, which gives me, as a militant atheist, all the more resolve to fight back.
Mary's Abortion started as a funny joke I would say around Christians just to piss them off. "What if the Virgin Mary had an abortion?" Of course, most Christians find the concept of Jesus being aborted to be absolutely appalling (haha). Eventually I decided to put the whole aborted-Jesus concept into a song.
Ultimately, I wanted to make a statement about Christian hypocrisy, in that far-right, evangelical Christians have no problem degrading women, or taking away their rights, or throwing the most disgusting slanders at them whenever they get the chance, yet somehow think that promoting the idea of an aborted Jesus as reprehensible.
I don't deny that Mary's Abortion is somewhat juvenile, and really the only purpose it serves is to get a rise out of Christians. Nonetheless, it's a fun song to play when you really want your audience to shake their head in embarrassment for even having heard it. Yeah, it's mostly comedic, but sometimes good satire can bring your opponents down to a more manageable level, and I think that Christians in America really need to hear crazy shit like that every once in a while, at least to keep them in check.
Rezine: Your latest EP is born into War, tell us about it!
Jeff: The Born Into War EP has been our most ambitious attempt at trying to make powerful, insightful punk rock. The title track came about when one day I realized that some of these kids I see at shows, or walking down the street, or even joining the military, were only toddlers when the War on Terror started. I ask myself, do they even remember 9-11? Some of these kids weren't even born then! That's when I realized how completely fucking sad it is that so many young adults in our country have never known a day of peace in their entire lives. Essentially, they were born into war.
Other songs on the EP do sort of fit into that general theme. "7.62mm" is basically a song about two people engaged in combat, where each side is shooting the same bullet at each other. It's very much a song about my own personal experience in Iraq, where on each side of the conflict we find men, soldiers, guerrilla freedom fighters, hopelessly tied to a conflict in which their lives are used as pawns in a much greater tragedy.
"Eleven Minutes of Fame" (based on the Newtown, Connecticut massacre in which over 20 school children were murdered) is basically about the rash of mass shootings we are currently experiencing in America, and how there is massive confusion in our national psyche around how to stop it. The grotesque, mindless violence you see here is not merely a collection of isolated incidents, but rather a symptom of the sick and depraved society in which we live. It's capitalism that divides each of us and turns neighbors into suspicious enemies. It's an ultra-rich oligarchy that owns the political and economic structure which is widening the wealth gap to the point where the poor become confused, angry, and driven to acts of madness. It's demagoguery, xenophobia, and a culture of hate widely expressed in the media and through agendas of our politicians. And no amount of gun control or legislation can stop this fevered pitch of madness. The only solution that I can see is that we address our social ills, and we hold the architects of this system directly accountable.
Which brings me to "Oh, Guillotine," which I feel somewhat speaks for itself. It's basically just an anthem of working class rage and a payback, of sorts, that has its roots in the history of mass insurrection.
So yes, I suppose there is a theme for the EP, in that it is a reflection of the social turmoil happening in the world at this moment in time. Like a hydra, the system responsible for inflicting and managing this violence and turmoil has many heads, and unfortunately there is not one solution in combating it. But there is hope that one day the masses can identify their true enemy and collectively work together to bringing about peace and social justice, by any means necessary.
Rezine: Is there a theme for this release?
Jeff: As for the release of "Born Into War," it is now just an EP, mostly for reasons of recording costs. This album was recorded in a very DIY manner, by a fellow musician and friend who recorded us in our living room! However, we have been putting aside money for recording costs, and there is plans to release these songs on a full length that we hope to start recording later this year. As you might have noticed, the songs on this EP are getting a little heavier and a little darker than some of the stuff you see on our first EP recorded back in 2013. We're definitely growing as a band and finding our own niche. Each of us, with Boone on bass and Lou on drums, has our own tastes and influences that really helped to forge these songs and our sound. Clearly we're influenced by crust and metal, but we also have a soft spot for the catchy, pop-driven hooks and melodies that definitely help to round-out our own style of punk. We do have more songs in the laboratory that we're working on that will continue being very political, very somber, and definitely very angry!
Rezine: Anything else coming up for Article 15
Jeff: Our only plans right now are to tour and record as much as we can afford to. We still have day jobs, and like most punk bands, we're certainly not into the music for the money (we're just a few of the many of broke-ass punks, haha). We do have a short tour coming up in late April that will hit the southwest region of the United States, tentatively stopping over in Albuquerque, El Paso, Tucson, and Phoenix. And as I mentioned above, we will be recording more songs that will hopefully be released as an LP later in the year. Really we just want to keep making music, keep playing gigs, keep meeting new people, and spreading the message of insurrection wherever we go. If you know any punks in Canada that want to host a house show or a riot let us know!