Genres: Punk / Hardcore / Post-Hardcore / Post-Metal / Screamo / Ambient
Related artists: мятеж, Swallows Nest, Gali Ma, Emö Lendvai, Stone Face Case, Peden Vs. Cod, You Me & The Machine, Open Letter, Yakutia, Twilight Child, Anal Birth, St. Bernardo, Adelleda, The Tragedy, Monster Fever, Randall Minus One and Jesse & The Delusions Of Grandeur.
Country: Hamilton, Ontario CANADA
Years Active: 2015-2017
Song: "Moth Volcano"
Album: "Nionde Plågan split"
Year: 2017
For fans of: Amber, Envy, Swallows Nest, Rinoa, Alexisonfire, Druse, Circle Takes The Square, Carcajou, Black Love, Old Soul, Leveless, Fall Of Efrafa, Terry Green, Sarin, Titan, Isis, Nionde Plågan, Meteors The Entire Night and Old Man Gloom.
Related artists: мятеж, Swallows Nest, Gali Ma, Emö Lendvai, Stone Face Case, Peden Vs. Cod, You Me & The Machine, Open Letter, Yakutia, Twilight Child, Anal Birth, St. Bernardo, Adelleda, The Tragedy, Monster Fever, Randall Minus One and Jesse & The Delusions Of Grandeur.
Country: Hamilton, Ontario CANADA
Years Active: 2015-2017
Song: "Moth Volcano"
Album: "Nionde Plågan split"
Year: 2017
For fans of: Amber, Envy, Swallows Nest, Rinoa, Alexisonfire, Druse, Circle Takes The Square, Carcajou, Black Love, Old Soul, Leveless, Fall Of Efrafa, Terry Green, Sarin, Titan, Isis, Nionde Plågan, Meteors The Entire Night and Old Man Gloom.
Label(s): Zegema Beach Records / Dingleberry Records / IFB Records / Through Love Records / Shove Records / Don't Live Like Me Records / Laserlife Records / Dead Punx Records / Suspended Soul Records / Longrail Recods / Stack Your Roster Records / Pundonor Records
THE WORLD THAT SUMMER, in its initial form, existed from August 2015 until my last show at the final Zegema Beach Fest night (aka day 3) on June 3rd, 2017. As of this post (February 2018) the remaining members are on a semi-hiatus, with their future still uncertain. During those first two years we played a pretty cohesive mixture of punk, hardcore, post-hardcore, post-metal and a touch of screamo.
I am not 100% sure when I met our guitarist Steve Vos, but I can tell you it was at the Punk Rock flea market in Hamilton sometime during the summer of 2014. He came up to my lonely little Zegema Beach Records booth and picked up La Quiete and Via Fondo, both of which he became smitten with. Inadvertently, I also met Ollie, our other future guitarist at the same event as he had a killer VHS and art booth. As it turned out, the two were childhood friends and grew up listening to music together.
The other half of the equation that was THE WORLD THAT SUMMER became involved after I put on a show for my Canadian friends Life In Vacuum and their Mexican touring partners Joliette (linked here). Our future drummer Jesse Stratton attended the show and arrived quite early, thus opening up time for a dialogue between us. After the show he asked if I was interested in starting a hardcore band and I wept with joy, as Steve and I had been searching for over a year already trying to find a drummer.
It was at this point, probably during the second week of August 2015, that THE WORLD THAT SUMMER was born, as I informed Steve that Jesse wanted to play drums in our band. Steve let me know that our mutual friend Ollie was going to play guitar and Jesse rounded out the band by snagging his friend Mike, who was apparently excited to play bass in a heavy band.
I should probably give a quick background for each member:
Mike S. (bass) = from a metal background, likes Meshugga and other techy stuff, also played in a rock band with Jesse
Jesse S. (drums) = played in a rock band, was brought up on pop-punk and dabbled in hardcore via one of his old bands The Tragedy
Ollie L. (guitar/vox) = from a black-metal and hardcore background, loves movies, loves beards
Steve V. (guitar/vox) = listened to a ton of stuff including punk, hardcore, metal and screamo (among other things) and had also played in skate punk and black metal bands
Dave N. aka me (vocals) = played in the powerviolence/screamo internet/touring project мятеж, jams screamo/post-hardcore on the daily, runs this blog and Zegema Beach Records
Okay, now that you know a tad about us, this must mean that we are at the first practice, sometime late August 2015, I reckon. This jam was extremely efficient, with Steve, Ollie, Jesse and I (Mike either couldn't come or wasn't officially in the band yet? ah I forget) pumped out "Some Guy Named Gabbo", "Swine Dialect Incantation" and "The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom", primarily because Steve and Ollie had written most of the parts prior to practice. I was very taken with "The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom" and think it's still one of the best songs I've taken part in. Each one of songs, especially after Mike had thrown in the bass and we had rounded out a few issues, had its own flavour and sound, with no two sounding the same. "Some Guy Named Gabbo" was slow, brooding, dark and long, clocking in at around six minutes of post-hardcore/post-metal with a lot of spoken word vocals. "Swine Dialect Incantation" was basically a duet with Jesse so it is pretty catchy with a lot of singing and more of a punk/hardcore feel, and an awesome guitar harmony to close it. "The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom" was short, intense and explosive chaotic/metallic hardcore that bordered on screamo and always gave me an Amber vibe. Here are the lyrics to those three songs.
“Some Guy Named Gabbo”
Dave:
Floating through the mist, it’s easy to dismiss
Breathe it in – begin again
to shrug yourself away
So take the fall, walk the line with me
or the future burns rorcal
I’ll take this life and try to mend the fences
Won’t hide the lies cuz numbness equals death
The burning outside, the stares – oh where’s the hindsight?
Won’t muffle the cries cuz silence breeds our death
Watch out! Shrapnel embedded in your eye
Ah fuck this life’s a waste of time
Jesse:
Try to mend fences
Silence is death
“Swine Dialect Incantation”
Dave:
Black night sleep tight, hope them bedbugs don’t bite
We won’t survive this
Abide, dismiss the crisis
Imbred, overfed
Cash reigns we mass produce the dead
I won’t stand by this
Revolt, hope this fist entices
Stop drop and roll
These bastards can peer right through my soul
Stop drop and roll
Termites burrow, deplete all hope
Jesse:
Doors and locks guarding the throne
From safe inside it’s preached with excess
With the masses kneeling
sing a song of hallowed skin and bones
Set loose the pigs to sink their in
Sing it children
Scream it from the trash mountains you roam
‘Soon or late the time is coming
when tyrant man will be overthrown’
Tearing back the curtain that they hold
and scream, ‘Revolt!’
Are we not alone?
“The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom”
Dave/(Steve)/(Ollie):
Born to lies, I’ll empathize
re-educate, unpopulated
Born to lies, I’ll emphasize
straight to the grave for we’ve nothing to save
Protectors (shit infestors)
Liars (death infectors)
Can’t stand the bullshit
Poison (in our veins)
Locked up (infinite)
Can’t stand the rhetoric
I can’t stand this horseshit
Humancide
Shockwave ripples through your body
slides said chunks into your grave
After this we added two more songs, the never-recorded and soon dropped "The Cells Infuckingside Me" (I think we played this at only two shows) and the very problematic "Sad Boise State". "The Cells Infuckingside Me" was a decent post-hardcore song, but during our initial recording session the version we had was pretty terrible and our newer songs made this one seem mediocre, so we dropped it from our live set and decided not to rerecord. The lyrical content is based around my experiences with yearly skin cancer removal and cancer in general. "Sad Boise State" was a song we all were pretty stoked on initially, and by the time we had played our first show and recorded it, it had been rewritten and revised to the point where when we played it we all fucking hated it. I think the recorded version turned out better than we ever played it in practice or live, but it still feels incomplete or unsure of itself to me, as it never roots itself anywhere and instead flies around four or five short sections, although I always enjoyed the "woo" near the end and Jesse's excellent vocals. The lyrics here were more or less a scoff at NDE, if you know what that is.
“The Cells Infuckingside Me”
Dave:
Roll into the snake pit
Those red and punctured eyes
As all our venom seeps into your thighs
Blinded by the sight of our own entrails dethroned
The sun’s come
The clouds break
The rays run
The gate shakes
The cells inside me are trying to end me
Jump off the top of the rooftop
Those swollen sutured thighs
As all our venom seeps out of your eyes
“Sad Boise State”
Jesse:
The water feels like a room devoid of life
It’s where I came from
That’s what they sung
So take me, I’m unaware
to the place of rotting death
where I belong
Such a sad song
I’ve always felt alive
We know Sad Boise will never die
Now we’re enshrined aborted lives
Dave:
Kincaid abreast we fly
The sad chant forever
This stand will die with aborted lives
We’re dead inside
Watch this shit inherent blindside
Our sobbing cries of self-righteous emo birthrights
Our mistakes in indecent irrelevance
Watch this
In October of 2015 we somehow landed ourselves on a ridiculous show with Ken Mode, Life In Vacuum and Worst Gift and for a first show it went really well. During this show we played "Sad Boise State" for the only time live and this version is a different one than that which appeared on the Apostles Of Eris split, as this had way more technical stuff by Steve on guitar, which he later ditched. During our last song of the night I almost passed out whilst screaming and running, as well as attempted to kick the mic stand over, but instead it slid across the floor and smashed into the wall next to Suze from Worst Gift. You can watch our full set here and read a review of the show and watch vids from the other bands here.
During November we wrote two new songs. The first was called "No Hugs for Lucas", and is about the futile effort of trying to shield my child from the terribleness of the world. It was written after my wife telling me a story of our little fifteen month old trying to give another child a hug in the playground, only to have them push him away. It was a very fun song to play live as it began with some skate punk, slid into post-hardcore and then ended with a repetitive and dissolving outro. The second track, titled "What is Dead May Never Die" has got some definite Game of Thrones references in there. It's also one of our hardest songs and was always one of my favourite to play live, again having some Amber similarities and could definitely be likened to a slower, more epic version of "The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom". I love the eerie intro and the fake stop before we all go full tilt, but the breakdowns and deep vocals provided by Steve Vos fuckin' make this song.
“No Hugs for Lucas”
Dave/(Steve)/(Ollie):
The drones advance (it’s no hypberbole) their weakness enhanced, (locked on our family), emotions can’t be seen, knock knock it’s catastrophe. Surreal in its forward enclosure of grim. Vast darkness disperses in. They’re calling, subtracting. My good son truth I hope it’s up to you. Seeping in through walls. Retreat, the hate flows like water. Calm down, let’s not loose our heads. This permeating balance slips into dread. Impromptu (booming entrance) haunts every photograph that bears the seeds of change.
“What is Dead May Never Die”
Dave/(Steve):
We can’t stand in foreign aggregates
Instead impale on this spear of heads
(We can’t stand in foreign aggregates)
like bodies dumped in a landfill
(Instead impale on this spirit)
And rip all your dreams from your fucking (corpse)
Ice age looms, we’re shitting war
Forever
Why not run, we’re comin’ in
and we shall fear nothing
All our weddings are slaughters
and there’s this burning inside my brain
and it’s cutting, it’s cutting
Now we’re runnin’ in
and we’re baring
such an absolution
emblazoned across our hearts
All our wedding are slaughters
like knives across our necks
And I’ll make it mine
for it’s culture
Once more, this stance is vital
Entire islands sink in distance
Drown your own home
So, in December we took our 7 songs to Lee at Toneland Studios in Hamilton and tracked all the instruments and vocals for two tracks in a day and night. Unfortunately, we had to ditch both guitars and rerecord them, do the remaining vocals in Steve's basement and strip "The Cells Infuckingside Me" from any future releases due to it not being up to the band's standards. This session also had us record the very new (at the time) demo version of "What is Dead May Never Die" which we used as a digital single before our string of three live shows in mid-2016. So out of the seven tunes we only ended up using five on two different releases.
The first release was with my friend Jesse Mowery and his solo project Apostles Of Eris. We had previously discussed on our 2015 мятеж tour together about doing a split when I finally found a band to play with. We used our three softest songs from the Toneland recording session, which were three of our first four or five songs written, being "Some Guy Named Gabbo", "Swine Dialect Incantation" and "Sad Boise State". We released the split on tape via my label Zegema Beach Records and Tim's Dingleberry Records in Germany on 125 gold tapes that I spray painted the A/B sides with the band acronyms on. We also released those songs on a super limited cdr titled 'Caddac' (out of 30, I think) along with a live recording of "The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom" from our first show. As mentioned earlier we never played "Sad Boise State" again, we dropped "Some Guy Named Gabbo" in mid-2016 from our live set but continued to play "Swine Dialect Incantation" right up to and including our final show in the summer of 2017. If you were wondering what Caddac means, it was a band suggestion by me early on because we all had either had cats, were dads, or both. I couldn't remember if we jokingly referred to ourselves as Cats And Dads or Dads And Cats so I just made an acronym of both names together, thus creating the word Caddac. We somehow landed a video interview on Idioteq.com and answered 10-11 questions about the band which you can check out if you like watching buffoons right here.
The other two songs from the Toneland sessions were "The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom" and "No Hugs for Lucas" and were used on the 'Eight Feet Under Vol. 1' 2x12" after Congratulations went on hiatus, as they were originally slated to be the other Canadian band along with Quebec's Nous Étions. This ended up working out well...mostly. First off, the split is fucking amazing. I love all of the bands on there and being on the same set of vinyls as them is unreal. With that being said, the release date of it was pushed back for a myriad of reasons and due to this our next batch of three songs was released before the 2x12", making our chronological discography sound a little wonky. Our final release ended up housing two of our earliest songs, with much poorer recording/mastering quality and, quite frankly, the songs aren't as strong as those written later. We didn't really even fill in enough time, as we had initially intended to use "The Cells Infuckingside Me" from the Toneland demo session as well, but decided against it as Steve said the stems were unusable. So instead I grabbed an mp3 of a bass song I wrote and layered it over a Mulholland Drive audio clip almost 15 years ago and uploaded it to our band chat. Everyone dug it and Steve put some extra effects on it and bam, we used it as an interlude and it works quite well, says I.
In January of 2016 we began writing more new songs, and did a pretty speedy job of it. The initial idea was to release our first two new tracks called "Wretched Portals" and "Heat Death Parties are the Bomb, Man" on a 7". We wrote "Wretched Portals" in just one practice and were playing it live just a few weeks later. The lyrics were mostly gibberish, with some factual accounts, including that time Steve farted for 12 seconds straight. After a few months it became apparent that the band was divided on the song and we ended up scrapping it for good after unsuccessfully trying to revise it. I think the song was quite decent, with an awkward build by Ollie that ended up stealing the show by the end of the track. I've made an mp3 of this song from a practice video and included it in the discography. I apologize in advance, but here are the lyrics.
“Wretched Portals”
Dave:
Filthy wretched cock piece fallout
You can’t touch the curtain
Forecast bliss, a sinking ship
Amidst the fall rejoice with voice
The time it sings without wings
embedded in the soil
I can’t see the end it’s all the time
And I find we’re unbound,
withered without the mind of unhinged intentions
I’ll build that ship
Ride that fucker to the sky
Detach and fly
It’s all coming down and we’re smiling
It’s all coming down and we’re dancing
For twelve seconds long
it’s predisposed to – fuck, done
Jesse:
?
From early to mid-2016 we were writing a concept LP and were up to about six songs when I dropped the news that I was moving to New Zealand and we reassessed our plans. We had written "Moth Volcano" (initially titled "Faction: Religion"), "Voltron Division", "2028", "2029", "2030" and "Faction: Humanity" that were intended to be on the 12", but we shuffled everything around, ditched more than half of those songs and then didn't find time to record the remaining songs. The ditching and lack of recording didn't become apparent until early 2017 when we made some final decisions as a band with our initial lineup. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Quickly, here are my lyrics for "2028 - Imminent Thinking".
"2028 - Imminent Thinking"
Dave:
Hold on, nothing's wrong right now.
War on, amputate the young.
We're done, all hopped up on intolerance.
It's getting so hot, our debts piling up
can't shake them off. It's not our fault!
Melt from our skin the market's constant
decline sleeps. Accept defeat!
All we hold dear has been thrown into the excrement basin and milked for the money we don't fucking have.
Forward thinking was never something we were good at.
Supply forever. Indecent demand for show.
Now we know we were one hell of a show.
Business interests trump growth, and we're good at it, goddammit.
Jesse:
?
After passing on the LP idea we discussed our options for recording songs on our three-day mini tour from Hamilton to Montreal and then back to Toronto in September of 2016. I made a little diary thing for it and posted all three dates with videos, links, thoughts, etc. and you can check out day#1 here (w/Eyelet, Foxmoulder and Wimp City), day#2 here (w/Carcajou and In The Name Of Havoc) and day#3 here (w/Slow Mass, Shahman and Fond). We had a blast together and played quite well. We even brought some THE WORLD THAT SUMMER branded hot sauce, and luckily no one bought any as Steve didn't put any kind of preservatives in it and they would likely have gotten quite ill. On that trip we decided to record three songs for an upcoming split with Sweden's Nionde Plågan at our friend Mike Smith's place after returning home. We rerecorded "What is Dead May Never Die" (perhaps with a little too much additional speed), "Heat Death Parties are the Bomb, Man" and "Moth Volcano". As a release this is definitely our crowning achievement. Opener "What is Dead May Never Die" is much darker and faster than the previous version and even includes Mike Smith rounding out the closing vocals with myself, Ollie, Steve and Jesse for "Drown your own home!". "Heat Death Parties are the Bomb, Man" was one of our favourites and a very short, fast and sassy number that I can't really liken to any other band that I've heard. We did realize that it was hard to pull off live as we either nailed it or fudged it up good, and ended up scrapping it for our final two shows. This 10"s closer is the quintessential THE WORLD THAT SUMMER song, I reckon, as "Moth Volcano" is the best song we ever recorded. The catalyst for this song was us saying before practice, "Hey Mike (bass), you never start any songs. Write a riff and we'll make a song." And we fuckin' did. Mike was jamming a lot of These Arms Are Snakes at the time but the heaviness of it all morphed it into something that my friend David of Sarin once likened to Old Man Gloom, perhaps the greatest compliment of my entire life. The lyrics for this song in particular are my favourite and most blatant of any I've written, and if you're extremely religious...
"Moth Volcano"
Dave/(Ollie):
Fist unrest, intolerance, a status
Fist unrest, no innocence, a mindset
Absent though, we'll just make it up.
(We'll take it in, release the sin, give order)
Scrub their brains, burn off hate, a clean slate
(Lack of thought, now implement a riot)
Lack of thought brought about our silence
We can't change this, so we buy a god
We can't change this, so worship a death kiss
Kin enroll so we all fuck the god
Bend minds over and ejaculate the death jizz
Bend minds over the fucking system
God stand on the nexus of...
We abide by the statute
God stand on the necks of our enemies, logic and reason
I feel like, in many ways, this is the end of the happy times we had as THE WORLD THAT SUMMER. The realization that I was moving to New Zealand gave me additional motivation to play as many shows as we could and finish our writing and recording. At the same time, Steve had a second baby and then got a new job, thus severely restricting his hours and energy. Not only that, but Steve also plays in Adelleda who were gearing up to record, thus requiring more of his time that he was already running drastically short on. After a few weeks of me insisting we make the most of it and play more shows around Steve's schedule, the band told me to cool it as they didn't want to over-saturate Hamilton with our presence. I totally understand where they were coming from, but we ended up playing a measly three shows in 8 months. It seemed pretty obvious that the love and passion we had for the band was waning. Somewhere in there, amidst an awkward tension, we wrote one of our best songs, the 7+ minute epic "Voltron Division". Ollie's guitar parts were so easy to work around and have such a chill, jammy vibe. And Jesse's drums, dear lord, I was smitten with all of his parts and the awesome fills and change-ups. After feeling like my vocals had begun to become a bit monotonous, I managed to try out some new stuff that ended up working really well. Most notably, for me at least, was the use of higher pitched screams to taper off and transition, accentuated spoken word pieces, as well as guttural screams in parts of the chorus. I dunno, I think is one of the best THE WORLD THAT SUMMER songs for sure. It's a shame all we've got is live videos and practice rehearsals of it, as a recorded version would have sounded amazing.
"Voltron Division"
Dave:
As the ashes pile in the tiny mounds of black. Were we every really anything at all? Subsiding, subverted, subservient, unconscious, unnamed. Our numbers are divided by zero - and goddamn, GODDAMN. This organic creature withers and decays. We're not extinct, but the human race is. These human bodies peel and replace our limbs with steel.
This body rots, falls infected.
This body rots, grim decisions, won't forget it.
This body rots, ripe infected,
all limbs ripped and torn, now Voltron's erected.
As humanity descends, our first/our fear, it brings out the worst. The violence, the religion - it tends to mass produce our end.
Yeah we're fallin', so cut it, bait the fallen and blindside us all.
No we ain't talkin', guns rule it. Limbs separate, disengage, factions arrange.
This body rots, falls infected.
This body rots, grim decisions, won't forget it.
This body rots, ripe infected.
But we're falling...we're falling down. Again.
It's a sin, we're falling, and the dead can't mourn the dead.
It's a sin, we're falling, silent atop our ashes vow impossible retrospective.
After taking a bit of a break we got back together in March or so and began getting ready for our 10" and 2x12" release as well as our final shows before I left the band in early June. We gutted "2029" and "2030" from practice and left "Faction: Humanity" for after my departure. We planned on recording "2028" but pulled that from our live set as we always had trouble hitting everything we needed to, and the song dragged a little live during the intro (well, it was initially written as two songs and we just threw them together). It was during these final practices that Ollie came in with the primary guitar parts for our final song "La Fine Non E La Fine" (titled inspired by La Quiete's LP by the same name) and we created our swan song. Much like "Voltron Division", this thing was long, spacey and epic with very steady guitar progressions and head bobbin' groovy bits, all with me screaming and/or doing spoken word. I feel like in the end, these two songs truly defined our sound, somewhere between post-hardcore, post-metal and post-rock...man that sounds pretentious. I mean, I love our hard shit, but those last two, bigger, spacier jams make me feel right and proper. We considered recording "La Fine Non E La Fine" before I left along with "Voltron Division" and "2028", but it was not to be. 😭
"La Fine Non è la Fine"
Dave:
Focus on the shores, war-torn.
Now strip it down, adore, and look away.
Focus on the years we wore.
Smile on your smile there's more over the ocean babe.
Take us away. We've overstayed.
Let the words fall from our lips and pool between our hips and then we'll step on out.
We are nearing the end of my THE WORLD THAT SUMMER story, as mid-2017 hit we had a few final shows, including a release show for the split 10", a farewell Hamilton show and then my final show at the Zegema Beach Records Fest in Toronto. The release show was fun, as we unveiled "La Fine Non E La Fine" to a pretty warm reception (show linked here). The Hamilton house show was a blast and basically a pre-ZBR sampler as we played with good friends Sarin, Terry Green and Huge Cosmic (show linked here). The ZBR Fest set (linked here) was so special and beyond exhausting. It also seemed like people dug it which is cool. As the set concluded I was surprised how okay I was with it all ending, as the previous six months had obviously taken some of the passion out of me and I was ready to let my place in the band lie. After jet-puking in an alley I watched my final Foxmoulder set and started to say some goodbyes.
I also wanted to give mad hugs and love to anyone who came to see us play or took the time to check our music, as well as the bands we played most and jived with, most notably Terry Green, Sarin, Life In Vacuum, Respire, Foxmoulder, Black Love and In The Name Of Havoc.
I've listed the shows that THE WORLD THAT SUMMER played in our (almost) two years together, including dates, the bands we played with, reviews, videos and links below, followed by all of our merch, which is low except for the Nionde Plågan split and the 2x12"s.
This post's artist is from the February 2018 Mix. This is track #5.
THE WORLD THAT SUMMER, in its initial form, existed from August 2015 until my last show at the final Zegema Beach Fest night (aka day 3) on June 3rd, 2017. As of this post (February 2018) the remaining members are on a semi-hiatus, with their future still uncertain. During those first two years we played a pretty cohesive mixture of punk, hardcore, post-hardcore, post-metal and a touch of screamo.
I am not 100% sure when I met our guitarist Steve Vos, but I can tell you it was at the Punk Rock flea market in Hamilton sometime during the summer of 2014. He came up to my lonely little Zegema Beach Records booth and picked up La Quiete and Via Fondo, both of which he became smitten with. Inadvertently, I also met Ollie, our other future guitarist at the same event as he had a killer VHS and art booth. As it turned out, the two were childhood friends and grew up listening to music together.The other half of the equation that was THE WORLD THAT SUMMER became involved after I put on a show for my Canadian friends Life In Vacuum and their Mexican touring partners Joliette (linked here). Our future drummer Jesse Stratton attended the show and arrived quite early, thus opening up time for a dialogue between us. After the show he asked if I was interested in starting a hardcore band and I wept with joy, as Steve and I had been searching for over a year already trying to find a drummer.
It was at this point, probably during the second week of August 2015, that THE WORLD THAT SUMMER was born, as I informed Steve that Jesse wanted to play drums in our band. Steve let me know that our mutual friend Ollie was going to play guitar and Jesse rounded out the band by snagging his friend Mike, who was apparently excited to play bass in a heavy band.
I should probably give a quick background for each member:
Mike S. (bass) = from a metal background, likes Meshugga and other techy stuff, also played in a rock band with Jesse
Jesse S. (drums) = played in a rock band, was brought up on pop-punk and dabbled in hardcore via one of his old bands The Tragedy
Ollie L. (guitar/vox) = from a black-metal and hardcore background, loves movies, loves beards
Steve V. (guitar/vox) = listened to a ton of stuff including punk, hardcore, metal and screamo (among other things) and had also played in skate punk and black metal bands
Dave N. aka me (vocals) = played in the powerviolence/screamo internet/touring project мятеж, jams screamo/post-hardcore on the daily, runs this blog and Zegema Beach Records
Okay, now that you know a tad about us, this must mean that we are at the first practice, sometime late August 2015, I reckon. This jam was extremely efficient, with Steve, Ollie, Jesse and I (Mike either couldn't come or wasn't officially in the band yet? ah I forget) pumped out "Some Guy Named Gabbo", "Swine Dialect Incantation" and "The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom", primarily because Steve and Ollie had written most of the parts prior to practice. I was very taken with "The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom" and think it's still one of the best songs I've taken part in. Each one of songs, especially after Mike had thrown in the bass and we had rounded out a few issues, had its own flavour and sound, with no two sounding the same. "Some Guy Named Gabbo" was slow, brooding, dark and long, clocking in at around six minutes of post-hardcore/post-metal with a lot of spoken word vocals. "Swine Dialect Incantation" was basically a duet with Jesse so it is pretty catchy with a lot of singing and more of a punk/hardcore feel, and an awesome guitar harmony to close it. "The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom" was short, intense and explosive chaotic/metallic hardcore that bordered on screamo and always gave me an Amber vibe. Here are the lyrics to those three songs.
“Some Guy Named Gabbo”
Dave:
Floating through the mist, it’s easy to dismiss
Breathe it in – begin again
to shrug yourself away
So take the fall, walk the line with me
or the future burns rorcal
I’ll take this life and try to mend the fences
Won’t hide the lies cuz numbness equals death
The burning outside, the stares – oh where’s the hindsight?
Won’t muffle the cries cuz silence breeds our death
Watch out! Shrapnel embedded in your eye
Ah fuck this life’s a waste of time
Jesse:
Try to mend fences
Silence is death
“Swine Dialect Incantation”
Dave:
Black night sleep tight, hope them bedbugs don’t bite
We won’t survive this
Abide, dismiss the crisis
Imbred, overfed
Cash reigns we mass produce the dead
I won’t stand by this
Revolt, hope this fist entices
Stop drop and roll
These bastards can peer right through my soul
Stop drop and roll
Termites burrow, deplete all hope
Jesse:
Doors and locks guarding the throne
From safe inside it’s preached with excess
With the masses kneeling
sing a song of hallowed skin and bones
Set loose the pigs to sink their in
Sing it children
Scream it from the trash mountains you roam
‘Soon or late the time is coming
when tyrant man will be overthrown’
Tearing back the curtain that they hold
and scream, ‘Revolt!’
Are we not alone?
“The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom”
Dave/(Steve)/(Ollie):
Born to lies, I’ll empathize
re-educate, unpopulated
Born to lies, I’ll emphasize
straight to the grave for we’ve nothing to save
Protectors (shit infestors)
Liars (death infectors)
Can’t stand the bullshit
Poison (in our veins)
Locked up (infinite)
Can’t stand the rhetoric
I can’t stand this horseshit
Humancide
Shockwave ripples through your body
slides said chunks into your grave
After this we added two more songs, the never-recorded and soon dropped "The Cells Infuckingside Me" (I think we played this at only two shows) and the very problematic "Sad Boise State". "The Cells Infuckingside Me" was a decent post-hardcore song, but during our initial recording session the version we had was pretty terrible and our newer songs made this one seem mediocre, so we dropped it from our live set and decided not to rerecord. The lyrical content is based around my experiences with yearly skin cancer removal and cancer in general. "Sad Boise State" was a song we all were pretty stoked on initially, and by the time we had played our first show and recorded it, it had been rewritten and revised to the point where when we played it we all fucking hated it. I think the recorded version turned out better than we ever played it in practice or live, but it still feels incomplete or unsure of itself to me, as it never roots itself anywhere and instead flies around four or five short sections, although I always enjoyed the "woo" near the end and Jesse's excellent vocals. The lyrics here were more or less a scoff at NDE, if you know what that is.
“The Cells Infuckingside Me”
Dave:
Roll into the snake pit
Those red and punctured eyes
As all our venom seeps into your thighs
Blinded by the sight of our own entrails dethroned
The sun’s come
The clouds break
The rays run
The gate shakes
The cells inside me are trying to end me
Jump off the top of the rooftop
Those swollen sutured thighs
As all our venom seeps out of your eyes
“Sad Boise State”
Jesse:
The water feels like a room devoid of life
It’s where I came from
That’s what they sung
So take me, I’m unaware
to the place of rotting death
where I belong
Such a sad song
I’ve always felt alive
We know Sad Boise will never die
Now we’re enshrined aborted lives
Dave:
Kincaid abreast we fly
The sad chant forever
This stand will die with aborted lives
We’re dead inside
Watch this shit inherent blindside
Our sobbing cries of self-righteous emo birthrights
Our mistakes in indecent irrelevance
Watch this
In October of 2015 we somehow landed ourselves on a ridiculous show with Ken Mode, Life In Vacuum and Worst Gift and for a first show it went really well. During this show we played "Sad Boise State" for the only time live and this version is a different one than that which appeared on the Apostles Of Eris split, as this had way more technical stuff by Steve on guitar, which he later ditched. During our last song of the night I almost passed out whilst screaming and running, as well as attempted to kick the mic stand over, but instead it slid across the floor and smashed into the wall next to Suze from Worst Gift. You can watch our full set here and read a review of the show and watch vids from the other bands here.
During November we wrote two new songs. The first was called "No Hugs for Lucas", and is about the futile effort of trying to shield my child from the terribleness of the world. It was written after my wife telling me a story of our little fifteen month old trying to give another child a hug in the playground, only to have them push him away. It was a very fun song to play live as it began with some skate punk, slid into post-hardcore and then ended with a repetitive and dissolving outro. The second track, titled "What is Dead May Never Die" has got some definite Game of Thrones references in there. It's also one of our hardest songs and was always one of my favourite to play live, again having some Amber similarities and could definitely be likened to a slower, more epic version of "The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom". I love the eerie intro and the fake stop before we all go full tilt, but the breakdowns and deep vocals provided by Steve Vos fuckin' make this song.
“No Hugs for Lucas”
Dave/(Steve)/(Ollie):
The drones advance (it’s no hypberbole) their weakness enhanced, (locked on our family), emotions can’t be seen, knock knock it’s catastrophe. Surreal in its forward enclosure of grim. Vast darkness disperses in. They’re calling, subtracting. My good son truth I hope it’s up to you. Seeping in through walls. Retreat, the hate flows like water. Calm down, let’s not loose our heads. This permeating balance slips into dread. Impromptu (booming entrance) haunts every photograph that bears the seeds of change.
“What is Dead May Never Die”
Dave/(Steve):
We can’t stand in foreign aggregates
Instead impale on this spear of heads
(We can’t stand in foreign aggregates)
like bodies dumped in a landfill
(Instead impale on this spirit)
And rip all your dreams from your fucking (corpse)
Ice age looms, we’re shitting war
Forever
Why not run, we’re comin’ in
and we shall fear nothing
All our weddings are slaughters
and there’s this burning inside my brain
and it’s cutting, it’s cutting
Now we’re runnin’ in
and we’re baring
such an absolution
emblazoned across our hearts
All our wedding are slaughters
like knives across our necks
And I’ll make it mine
for it’s culture
Once more, this stance is vital
Entire islands sink in distance
Drown your own home
So, in December we took our 7 songs to Lee at Toneland Studios in Hamilton and tracked all the instruments and vocals for two tracks in a day and night. Unfortunately, we had to ditch both guitars and rerecord them, do the remaining vocals in Steve's basement and strip "The Cells Infuckingside Me" from any future releases due to it not being up to the band's standards. This session also had us record the very new (at the time) demo version of "What is Dead May Never Die" which we used as a digital single before our string of three live shows in mid-2016. So out of the seven tunes we only ended up using five on two different releases.
The first release was with my friend Jesse Mowery and his solo project Apostles Of Eris. We had previously discussed on our 2015 мятеж tour together about doing a split when I finally found a band to play with. We used our three softest songs from the Toneland recording session, which were three of our first four or five songs written, being "Some Guy Named Gabbo", "Swine Dialect Incantation" and "Sad Boise State". We released the split on tape via my label Zegema Beach Records and Tim's Dingleberry Records in Germany on 125 gold tapes that I spray painted the A/B sides with the band acronyms on. We also released those songs on a super limited cdr titled 'Caddac' (out of 30, I think) along with a live recording of "The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom" from our first show. As mentioned earlier we never played "Sad Boise State" again, we dropped "Some Guy Named Gabbo" in mid-2016 from our live set but continued to play "Swine Dialect Incantation" right up to and including our final show in the summer of 2017. If you were wondering what Caddac means, it was a band suggestion by me early on because we all had either had cats, were dads, or both. I couldn't remember if we jokingly referred to ourselves as Cats And Dads or Dads And Cats so I just made an acronym of both names together, thus creating the word Caddac. We somehow landed a video interview on Idioteq.com and answered 10-11 questions about the band which you can check out if you like watching buffoons right here.
The other two songs from the Toneland sessions were "The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom" and "No Hugs for Lucas" and were used on the 'Eight Feet Under Vol. 1' 2x12" after Congratulations went on hiatus, as they were originally slated to be the other Canadian band along with Quebec's Nous Étions. This ended up working out well...mostly. First off, the split is fucking amazing. I love all of the bands on there and being on the same set of vinyls as them is unreal. With that being said, the release date of it was pushed back for a myriad of reasons and due to this our next batch of three songs was released before the 2x12", making our chronological discography sound a little wonky. Our final release ended up housing two of our earliest songs, with much poorer recording/mastering quality and, quite frankly, the songs aren't as strong as those written later. We didn't really even fill in enough time, as we had initially intended to use "The Cells Infuckingside Me" from the Toneland demo session as well, but decided against it as Steve said the stems were unusable. So instead I grabbed an mp3 of a bass song I wrote and layered it over a Mulholland Drive audio clip almost 15 years ago and uploaded it to our band chat. Everyone dug it and Steve put some extra effects on it and bam, we used it as an interlude and it works quite well, says I.
In January of 2016 we began writing more new songs, and did a pretty speedy job of it. The initial idea was to release our first two new tracks called "Wretched Portals" and "Heat Death Parties are the Bomb, Man" on a 7". We wrote "Wretched Portals" in just one practice and were playing it live just a few weeks later. The lyrics were mostly gibberish, with some factual accounts, including that time Steve farted for 12 seconds straight. After a few months it became apparent that the band was divided on the song and we ended up scrapping it for good after unsuccessfully trying to revise it. I think the song was quite decent, with an awkward build by Ollie that ended up stealing the show by the end of the track. I've made an mp3 of this song from a practice video and included it in the discography. I apologize in advance, but here are the lyrics.
“Wretched Portals”
Dave:
Filthy wretched cock piece fallout
You can’t touch the curtain
Forecast bliss, a sinking ship
Amidst the fall rejoice with voice
The time it sings without wings
embedded in the soil
I can’t see the end it’s all the time
And I find we’re unbound,
withered without the mind of unhinged intentions
I’ll build that ship
Ride that fucker to the sky
Detach and fly
It’s all coming down and we’re smiling
It’s all coming down and we’re dancing
For twelve seconds long
it’s predisposed to – fuck, done
Jesse:
?
"Heat Death Parties are the Bomb, Man"
Dave:
This instance holds distance and in a flash we all kiss our bomb, man. We lace the kisses, we bound their mouths with stitches, bleed their blood and sing their songs. Bow down, meet your sensei. So predictable every day. All blind, inherent brainstem lacks the rationale to heat the oven. It's not what wer're sayin', it's just oh so fun. Disease army, oh yeah, melt us all into one. This instance holds distance and in a flash we all kiss our bomb, man. So melt us all into one.
So I guess it's about here that we played our release show with good friends and fantastic Toronto bands Foxmoulder, Sarin and Terry Green in our local Doors Pub in Hamilton. It was a blast but it ran super late, and after a piercing noise set that sent a good 10 people scrambling for the door we played at about 1am to a small group of very tired individuals. I guess they couldn't have been that tired, as they were able to hoist me above their heads numerous times while I screamed, which would end up being the only time in my life that that's happened. You can check out some videos and a review of it here. We also played another banger in Toronto with Lentic Waters, Locktender, Respire and La Luna at the legendary Soybomb venue in April that will go down as one of my favourite shows that I've ever played (linked here). In May we played an insane basement show in Cambridge at our friends' house with more amazing bands, this time Black Love, Respire, Terry Green and La Luna. Read about and watch that show here or take seven minutes and watch the teaser/trailer here.
From early to mid-2016 we were writing a concept LP and were up to about six songs when I dropped the news that I was moving to New Zealand and we reassessed our plans. We had written "Moth Volcano" (initially titled "Faction: Religion"), "Voltron Division", "2028", "2029", "2030" and "Faction: Humanity" that were intended to be on the 12", but we shuffled everything around, ditched more than half of those songs and then didn't find time to record the remaining songs. The ditching and lack of recording didn't become apparent until early 2017 when we made some final decisions as a band with our initial lineup. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Quickly, here are my lyrics for "2028 - Imminent Thinking".
"2028 - Imminent Thinking"
Dave:
Hold on, nothing's wrong right now.
War on, amputate the young.
We're done, all hopped up on intolerance.
It's getting so hot, our debts piling up
can't shake them off. It's not our fault!
Melt from our skin the market's constant
decline sleeps. Accept defeat!
All we hold dear has been thrown into the excrement basin and milked for the money we don't fucking have.
Forward thinking was never something we were good at.
Supply forever. Indecent demand for show.
Now we know we were one hell of a show.
Business interests trump growth, and we're good at it, goddammit.
Jesse:
?
After passing on the LP idea we discussed our options for recording songs on our three-day mini tour from Hamilton to Montreal and then back to Toronto in September of 2016. I made a little diary thing for it and posted all three dates with videos, links, thoughts, etc. and you can check out day#1 here (w/Eyelet, Foxmoulder and Wimp City), day#2 here (w/Carcajou and In The Name Of Havoc) and day#3 here (w/Slow Mass, Shahman and Fond). We had a blast together and played quite well. We even brought some THE WORLD THAT SUMMER branded hot sauce, and luckily no one bought any as Steve didn't put any kind of preservatives in it and they would likely have gotten quite ill. On that trip we decided to record three songs for an upcoming split with Sweden's Nionde Plågan at our friend Mike Smith's place after returning home. We rerecorded "What is Dead May Never Die" (perhaps with a little too much additional speed), "Heat Death Parties are the Bomb, Man" and "Moth Volcano". As a release this is definitely our crowning achievement. Opener "What is Dead May Never Die" is much darker and faster than the previous version and even includes Mike Smith rounding out the closing vocals with myself, Ollie, Steve and Jesse for "Drown your own home!". "Heat Death Parties are the Bomb, Man" was one of our favourites and a very short, fast and sassy number that I can't really liken to any other band that I've heard. We did realize that it was hard to pull off live as we either nailed it or fudged it up good, and ended up scrapping it for our final two shows. This 10"s closer is the quintessential THE WORLD THAT SUMMER song, I reckon, as "Moth Volcano" is the best song we ever recorded. The catalyst for this song was us saying before practice, "Hey Mike (bass), you never start any songs. Write a riff and we'll make a song." And we fuckin' did. Mike was jamming a lot of These Arms Are Snakes at the time but the heaviness of it all morphed it into something that my friend David of Sarin once likened to Old Man Gloom, perhaps the greatest compliment of my entire life. The lyrics for this song in particular are my favourite and most blatant of any I've written, and if you're extremely religious...
"Moth Volcano"
Dave/(Ollie):
Fist unrest, intolerance, a status
Fist unrest, no innocence, a mindset
Absent though, we'll just make it up.
(We'll take it in, release the sin, give order)
Scrub their brains, burn off hate, a clean slate
(Lack of thought, now implement a riot)
Lack of thought brought about our silence
We can't change this, so we buy a god
We can't change this, so worship a death kiss
Kin enroll so we all fuck the god
Bend minds over and ejaculate the death jizz
Bend minds over the fucking system
God stand on the nexus of...
We abide by the statute
God stand on the necks of our enemies, logic and reason
I feel like, in many ways, this is the end of the happy times we had as THE WORLD THAT SUMMER. The realization that I was moving to New Zealand gave me additional motivation to play as many shows as we could and finish our writing and recording. At the same time, Steve had a second baby and then got a new job, thus severely restricting his hours and energy. Not only that, but Steve also plays in Adelleda who were gearing up to record, thus requiring more of his time that he was already running drastically short on. After a few weeks of me insisting we make the most of it and play more shows around Steve's schedule, the band told me to cool it as they didn't want to over-saturate Hamilton with our presence. I totally understand where they were coming from, but we ended up playing a measly three shows in 8 months. It seemed pretty obvious that the love and passion we had for the band was waning. Somewhere in there, amidst an awkward tension, we wrote one of our best songs, the 7+ minute epic "Voltron Division". Ollie's guitar parts were so easy to work around and have such a chill, jammy vibe. And Jesse's drums, dear lord, I was smitten with all of his parts and the awesome fills and change-ups. After feeling like my vocals had begun to become a bit monotonous, I managed to try out some new stuff that ended up working really well. Most notably, for me at least, was the use of higher pitched screams to taper off and transition, accentuated spoken word pieces, as well as guttural screams in parts of the chorus. I dunno, I think is one of the best THE WORLD THAT SUMMER songs for sure. It's a shame all we've got is live videos and practice rehearsals of it, as a recorded version would have sounded amazing.
"Voltron Division"
Dave:
As the ashes pile in the tiny mounds of black. Were we every really anything at all? Subsiding, subverted, subservient, unconscious, unnamed. Our numbers are divided by zero - and goddamn, GODDAMN. This organic creature withers and decays. We're not extinct, but the human race is. These human bodies peel and replace our limbs with steel.
This body rots, falls infected.
This body rots, grim decisions, won't forget it.
This body rots, ripe infected,
all limbs ripped and torn, now Voltron's erected.
As humanity descends, our first/our fear, it brings out the worst. The violence, the religion - it tends to mass produce our end.
Yeah we're fallin', so cut it, bait the fallen and blindside us all.
No we ain't talkin', guns rule it. Limbs separate, disengage, factions arrange.
This body rots, falls infected.
This body rots, grim decisions, won't forget it.
This body rots, ripe infected.
But we're falling...we're falling down. Again.
It's a sin, we're falling, and the dead can't mourn the dead.
It's a sin, we're falling, silent atop our ashes vow impossible retrospective.
After taking a bit of a break we got back together in March or so and began getting ready for our 10" and 2x12" release as well as our final shows before I left the band in early June. We gutted "2029" and "2030" from practice and left "Faction: Humanity" for after my departure. We planned on recording "2028" but pulled that from our live set as we always had trouble hitting everything we needed to, and the song dragged a little live during the intro (well, it was initially written as two songs and we just threw them together). It was during these final practices that Ollie came in with the primary guitar parts for our final song "La Fine Non E La Fine" (titled inspired by La Quiete's LP by the same name) and we created our swan song. Much like "Voltron Division", this thing was long, spacey and epic with very steady guitar progressions and head bobbin' groovy bits, all with me screaming and/or doing spoken word. I feel like in the end, these two songs truly defined our sound, somewhere between post-hardcore, post-metal and post-rock...man that sounds pretentious. I mean, I love our hard shit, but those last two, bigger, spacier jams make me feel right and proper. We considered recording "La Fine Non E La Fine" before I left along with "Voltron Division" and "2028", but it was not to be. 😭
"La Fine Non è la Fine"
Dave:
Focus on the shores, war-torn.
Now strip it down, adore, and look away.
Focus on the years we wore.
Smile on your smile there's more over the ocean babe.
Take us away. We've overstayed.
Let the words fall from our lips and pool between our hips and then we'll step on out.
We are nearing the end of my THE WORLD THAT SUMMER story, as mid-2017 hit we had a few final shows, including a release show for the split 10", a farewell Hamilton show and then my final show at the Zegema Beach Records Fest in Toronto. The release show was fun, as we unveiled "La Fine Non E La Fine" to a pretty warm reception (show linked here). The Hamilton house show was a blast and basically a pre-ZBR sampler as we played with good friends Sarin, Terry Green and Huge Cosmic (show linked here). The ZBR Fest set (linked here) was so special and beyond exhausting. It also seemed like people dug it which is cool. As the set concluded I was surprised how okay I was with it all ending, as the previous six months had obviously taken some of the passion out of me and I was ready to let my place in the band lie. After jet-puking in an alley I watched my final Foxmoulder set and started to say some goodbyes.
I also wanted to give mad hugs and love to anyone who came to see us play or took the time to check our music, as well as the bands we played most and jived with, most notably Terry Green, Sarin, Life In Vacuum, Respire, Foxmoulder, Black Love and In The Name Of Havoc.
I've listed the shows that THE WORLD THAT SUMMER played in our (almost) two years together, including dates, the bands we played with, reviews, videos and links below, followed by all of our merch, which is low except for the Nionde Plågan split and the 2x12"s.
Shows
Remaining Merch
________________________________________
DISCOGRAPHY
2016 - Apostles Of Eris split cassetteLP (stream/donate/download here)
2016 - Caddac cdrEP (same as the split + live song)
2016 - Deadmos digital single (stream/donate/download here)
2017 - Nionde Plågan split 10"EP (stream/donate/download here)
2017 - Eight Feet Under Vol. 1 2x12"LP (stream/donate/download here)
2018 - Digital Discography + live/practice demos (download here)
________________________________________
(2017) THE WORLD THAT SUMMER - "La Fine Non è la Fine" live (unrecorded song)
(2017) THE WORLD THAT SUMMER - "Voltron Division" live (unrecorded song)
(2017) THE WORLD THAT SUMMER - "Moth Volcano" (from 'Nionde Plågan' split)
(2017) THE WORLD THAT SUMMER - "Moth Volcano" live
(2017) THE WORLD THAT SUMMER - "The Standard Gravity of Impending Doom" (from 'Eight Feet Under Vol. 1')
(2016) THE WORLD THAT SUMMER - "Faction - Humanity" practice video (unrecorded song)
(2016) THE WORLD THAT SUMMER - "2030" practice video (unrecorded song)
(2016) THE WORLD THAT SUMMER - "Wretched Portals" from practice video [our very first proper attempt] (unrecorded song)
(2016) THE WORLD THAT SUMMER - "improv jam" practice video (unrecorded song)
(2016) THE WORLD THAT SUMMER - "What is Dead May Never Die [demo version]" (from 'Deadmos')
(2016) THE WORLD THAT SUMMER - "Some Guy Named Gabbo" (from 'Apostles Of Eris' split)
(2015) THE WORLD THAT SUMMER - "Sad Boise State" live video from first show (alternate version of song)
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THE WORLD THAT SUMMER out of print mp3 discography download / additional links
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Revisited this. So fucking good man
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