For many people, before they reach out to a friend or a professional for help, the first place they turn is the music they love for reassurance, guidance and a cathartic release. For Mat growing up, that record was Rancid’s seminal punk rock masterpiece ...And Out Come The Wolves, but in SELF HELL, with its wide-reaching purview, they might have written a self-help record for a new generation of heavy music fans.
“Knowing that it’s getting used is mad,” gushes Mat. “We’re making it because we need to make. We don’t start the project making music for anyone else but ourselves, but we hand over this thing and find out that someone needed it in a dark time. That’s one of the craziest things when someone far away is like, ‘Dude, this song and these lyrics…’ I wrote them for me, but you’ve used it now, and that’s so cool.
“No matter how bad our situation’s been, we’ve always spun it into a positive,” Mat continues. “It’s the same with the songs, they can be negative as fuck but it’s always about making the best of something. Maybe the message instilled in those songs comes through to people. That’s literally the lyric in one of the new songs, ‘Let’s make the best of a bad situation…’”
So what bad situations have happened in your own lives to that you can attribute to self-hell?
“I think over the years – in our band life as well as our personal lives – we’ve gone through a lot of rollercoasters,” says Loz. “There’s been a lot of compromise, a lot of internal things going on. During the last record, I think someone had a break-up, someone went into hospital… all these different things. And on this record it’s a culmination of what we’ve been through that still carries through the music now.”
“You’ve had three throat surgeries, that’s been a huge part of your life,” offers Mat.
“I think I hold the record!” Loz laughs in response.
“That’s been a battle over the past 10 years for sure,” Mat continues. “We’ve all dabbled with addiction because you can’t be in this industry and not fuck with it. If you can, good on ya, but we grew up just getting on a bottle of cider – that was literally our culture as kids. We’ve all spent about 20 years trying to wean that out of us.
“For me, all my battles are having something you care about so much also be a total burden because you don’t ever stop working – it takes over my life, I’m a total control freak. I’m doing exactly what I wanted to do, but it’s the most stressful thing in the world. Little Simz says it on her record [Heart On Fire], ‘My life is a blessing but it comes with the stresses,’ and fucking word. It comes with so much because it’s so good.”