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From the Promoter

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STRUNG OUT

Yet while these songs are fuell
ed by a power and aggression, the band
–
completed by guitarists Jake Kiley and Rob Ramos, bassist Chris Aiken and
new drummer (since 2018) RJ Shankle
–
infused them with plenty of nuance,
too. Some of that is thanks to the lessons learned from last year’s
acoustic yet expansive acoustic EP Black Out The Sky, something Cruz says
was a necessary step the band had to take in order to then make this
record. Underneath it all, however, is the same desperate need to write
these songs and get them out of his syst
em.
“This opportunity I’ve been given, and everything I’ve been doing, I don’t
have any say in it,” Cruz says. “I don’t have a choice. I have to fucking
do this. I have things inside of me that swell up when I go through this,
but it’s what people put into
what they hear and what they then take out of
it that’s the magic. I need to do this, but if it’s not making a
connection, I have no right to be here. My favorite part about America is
the pain of the poor people and what they create out of it
–
the cultu
re
that the poorest people of this country have created. From that came blues,
jazz, rock
n
roll, and, to me, coming from nothing and creating something
is everything to me.”
You can hear how that is
–
how true that still is
–
from the beginning to
the en
d of Songs Of Armor And Devotion. It’s a punk record, but it’s also
much more than that. It’s a political record that addresses the state we’re
in, but at its core is a heart and humanity
–
and a belief in that humanity
–
that overrides everything else. It’
s pain and sadness and hope and
rebellion all wrapped into one powerful statement that also serves as a
culmination of the band’s three decades together. And while the record sees
Strung Out still writing at the height of their abilities, at the same
time,
when Cruz reflects back on these songs, he thinks they represent
something monumental for the band, even if he’s not entirely sure what that
actually is.
“I find that it’s time for a new adventure,” he says. “I feel like I’ve
given what I needed to give t
o Strung Out. I feel like we did what we
needed to do and it’s time to move on. I’ve grown. I’m not angry like I
used to be
–
I feel like this was the end of something, and now it’s time
for a new life. I look back on the record and I think ‘Done.’ For me
personally, it’s a new beginning. We still have a lot left and as long as
we listen to each other and we care about what each other has to say, I
don’t see an end for Strung Out. I just don’t want to repeat things that
I’ve done. I can’t write like that an
ymore.

THE CASUALTIES

New York City based street punk band formed in 1990. Since then the band has released a number of EP's & LP's. Working with a number of label including Tribal War Records, Eyeball Records, and more recently with SideOneDummy Records.

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