Interview with Storm Of Sedition
Rezine: Who plays in the band?
Storm Of Sedition: For various reasons, we avoid putting our names on releases and online. Some of us have experienced police surveillance and repression in the past during the Olympics ordeal in 2010. In 2014, people we know had their house raided by the pigs due to being allegedly responsible for anti-pipelines graffiti, bank vandalism, arson attacks, and other subversive activities. We also know that in the past we've had undercover cops present at at least one of our shows. Although playing publicly in a band inevitably leads to our identities being fairly easily known, we like to make the pig's jobs as difficult as possible.
Rezine: What fuels the music of Storm Of Sedition?
SOS: Wanting to find an escape route out of the alienated reality we face living in industrial, technological, mass-society. The social mechanisms of control and domination that severely limit our freedom. Experiencing the impoverishment of urban life. Watching civilization destroy everything around us as it uses its own narrative of progress to rationalize its continuance. Knowing that there are other ways to live freely and in a manner that we, as human beings, do not need to dominate, control, form hierarchical social structures, and inflict ecological devastation.
Rezine: How did the band start?
SOS: We started in 2011 as a three piece. We weren't sure what direction we were going with it at the beginning, but we knew we wanted to use "extreme" music to propagate anarchist ideas. It eventually began to take a form we were happy with. Since then we've added a second guitarist which has helped fill out the sound.
Rezine: What are your music influences?
SOS: Mainly 80's and 90's crust and anarcho-punk as well as a fair amount of black metal and death metal.
Rezine: What inspired the lyrics of your latest album?
SOS: Mainly our experiences in everyday life and our attempts to develop our understanding of the world around us. The lyrics on our upcoming record Decivilize, range from attacking civilization and urban life to politics and leftist activism. We talk about focusing on the vulnerabilities of the industrial, technological infrastructure of which civilization is dependent and how that can be a valuable approach. We also look at the ways civilization is maintained and reproduced, such as through the submission to, and the belief in its social institutions (education, police, government, gender etc.) and ideologies (progress, humanism, scientism etc). Civilization, being made up of complex mass social mechanisms reproduced through our believing in and submitting to its networks of domination, cannot be thought of as simply a physical thing to be destroyed. Obviously more is needed. But attacks on infrastructure can useful and inspiring. Another idea we've talked about is how, by targeting the electrical grid or other key infrastructure, you could help destabilize and weaken civilizations control of an area, as part of a strategy to liberate a region from its grasp. Especially if it were done during an already culminating insurgency.
Rezine: Do you have other songs that didn't make it to the latest album?
SOS: Not really, we take our time writing our songs. It took us four years to write the ten that will be on the Decivilize, but there is new material in the works.
Rezine: Do you have a song you are excited to play live and why?
SOS: We're just looking forward to playing the new material in general, and seeing how people will react to the ideas we're presenting, not being the typical punk/crust songs about war, religion etc. Punk music has unfortunately been trapped within the confines of ideological, leftist discourse for a long time. Even most anarchist bands haven't and still don't go deeper than espousing leftist-anarchist class struggle politics, very rarely going so far as to attack civilization itself. That's why we're looking forward to presenting what we're describing as an anti-political, anti-civilization praxis and seeing what sort of conversations develop out of that.
Rezine: Do you have a tour coming up? Any plans to visit Montreal?
SOS: We have a tour of BC and Alberta coming up this June, called the "Against the Industrial Hydra Tour." We're doing it with a really great anarchist grind band from Kamloops called Altercation. The main focus of the tour is to promote inspiring, subversive ideas and to spark up conversations about resisting industrialism and how that relates to an anti-civilization praxis. We think it makes sense to attack the energy infrastructure that fuels civilization, including LNG and other "green energies" that Canada's industrial economy is attempting to move towards. We're looking forward to going up north to communities close to Lelu Island where some inspiring resistance is going on. Indigenous land defenders are currently resisting Pacific North West LNG who are attempting to build an LNG plant in the region. This would have obvious severe and harmful implications to the ecology of Lax U’u’la (Lelu Island) & Flora Banks and the Gitwilgyots Tribe, who's territory it is.
We don't currently have any plans for Montreal, but we'll probably make it out there at some point. After this tour, we'll be heading to the US.
Rezine: Do you have other projects?
SOS: As far as music goes, one of our members plays in Iskra, a long running anarchist metal band from Victoria. Other than music, we're always in some way involved in various anarchist projects. These take different forms at different times. We have a growing distro of books and zines that we've put a fair amount of time into. In the last couple of years we've set up solidarity benefits for indigenous land defenders and incarcerated anarchists. Other than that, some of the things we stay busy with are martial training, finding creative ways to get by and become less reliant on industrial civilization, and spending a lot of time trying to get to know and connect with our land base.