How did CASTILLO come together, could you give us a history of the band and its members?

Castillo basically started in my bedroom. I started writing songs during the 2020 lockdowns, specifically during April and May. Apart from work, I had nothing to do in my spare time so I would sit in my room for hours and just write songs, record them on my phone, and layer parts until I was satisfied. Once I had some material I asked Levi if he wanted to play drums for a new project and he agreed. No rehearsal spaces were open, so we started practicing in his carpentry shop, and after about two months of practicing as a two-man band, we decided to record 5 songs.

After the record came out, we decided that we wanted to play shows and needed a full lineup. So I basically just recruited friends that I enjoy hanging out with. Greg plays 1 st guitar and he sings for my other band, Repeat Offender. We’ve known each other since we were in high school. Blake plays bass in my other band, Criminal Outfit, and he was the first person I thought of to play bass. Alex plays second guitar and he was previously in a band called Wise. All of us are from the LA area except Blake; he’s originally from Riverside, which is in the Inland Empire.

You guys have a very unique sound, a great blend of modern Oi!/Punk and plenty of nods to the classics. What bands have been the biggest musical influences on the band, and how has being from a city with such a rich and varied punk rock history affected the band?

When writing I didn’t set out to be a “worship” band, trying to exactly copy or emulate a particular band or era. You know, you have Cro-Mags worship or Negative Approach worship bands. I like stuff like that, but I wanted a variety of influences to inform our sound. I was mainly listening to 80s French and Italian Oi! when writing, but I also love so much other stuff like 70s power-pop, glam, and punk. I wanted a band that sounded kind of raw, but with super melodic hooks and gruff vocals. I like the contrast between melody and roughness. Here’s three bands that really inspired me when writing: Snix, The Jook, The Wedding Present.

It seems like there is a number of new bands in the states with younger members, bringing in flavours from the punk and/or hardcore scene and interjecting it with the classic Oi sounds. Do you think in recent years there has been more crossover than in the past and is this in part due to maybe less gatekeeping of the scene? Could you introduce some of what you perceive to be the best of the new crop of USA Oi! and street punk bands?

The U.S. skinhead scene is notoriously gang-oriented and very big on gatekeeping. It also has a strong elder/freshcut tradition, which basically means that skinheads won’t be cool with you or let you hang around if you haven’t been cropped in by an elder that people respect. The rationale is typically to weed out posers and those who can’t really hang with the skinhead lifestyle. Since skinheads in the U.S. were very gang-oriented it’s easy to see why they gate kept so hard. You want to test whether someone can fight and truly have your back and so you won’t let them be around unless they can do so. I get all that. But posers will always come and go; they’ll jump on the skinhead bandwagon and they’ll get bored of the scene in a year or two, or get spooked by the violence. So you don’t really need such strict gatekeeping in this day and age – that’s my personal opinion and older skins might disagree with me but they should ask themselves how much good this old tradition has generated recently. Has it led to better music and bands in the scene? Has it made more people interested in the skinhead scene? I think the answer is NO. I think it’s great when new, young kids come into the Oi!/skinhead scene. People are always immediately skeptical of new kids, but the truth is that without them, the scene cannot go on or thrive. Younger kids can’t relate to 45-year-olds playing music; you need young, good bands to attract the younger generation. Post-pandemic, the scene in LA has been super interesting. There has been tons of crossover between subcultures and people. You see hardcore kids and punks going to Oi! shows, and all these different groups moshing and singing along side by side. It wasn’t really like this before the pandemic. I don’t know what the explanation is, but it’s cool to see.

As far as new U.S. bands go, The New York Hounds were incredible (RIP Simón). A few of us from LA flew out for the last gig in Brooklyn and it was probably the best show I’ve seen in a decade. Violent Way are a super good band full of amazing and hilarious guys. We did a few shows with them in California and we can’t wait to play in New York with them. Slugger, from Northern California, are a great new band who have a debut record out on Try and Stop Me Records and Longshot Music. They have a raw but powerful sound that reminds me of early Templars.

What have been your most memorable gigs to date, and favourite venues/cities to play so far? Are there bands that you regularly share the bill with?

So far we have only played in California, but I would say for me the most memorable shows have been our LA shows with Violent Way and the Chisel. The LA show with Violent Way was probably the biggest, most well-attended Oi! show in years and the energy that night was tense, electric, and so fun. The show got shut down for about 10 minutes until we saved it, somehow.

You’ve recently released a two-song promo tape – what’s in the works for CASTILLO on the vinyl release front, and where will people be able to get updates on that? Also, tapes seem to have come back with a vengeance recently, why do you think that is?

At the moment we are writing our next record, which will be 6 songs or so. I hope to have that pressed and released by early summer 2023. I think the new songs are much more developed and thought out than the old stuff, and you’ll see a lot more variety of influences on display.

I’ve always loved cassette tapes. In the punk and hardcore world, tapes are very popular. I don’t really have many Oi! tapes in my collection, but I would love for bands to keep releasing them. I think more people are turning to tapes because they are tired of the wait times at record plants. I still think a record is the best way to go, but waiting that long is not always ideal.

Do you guys plan on undertaking any touring? Where would you most like to play, and with whom?

We want to do some east coast shows and we want to do shows in Europe, hopefully, next summer. I don’t think we will ever do any heavy-duty touring; we’ll probably just play a few sprinkled shows in a couple of different places. Paris is basically the capital of Oi! as far as I am concerned so that is one place I really want to play in.

Have you heard many Canadian Oi! bands? If so, which bands have you enjoyed the most?

Of course! Canada has so many really great bands. Some current bands I love include Beton Arme, Force Majeure, Ultra Razzia. There’s many more that I am forgetting but you get the idea. Going back some years I was really into Hired Goons.

Cheers for the interview Alex – anything you would like to add?

Thanks for taking an interest in us and for the interview. I love this zine!

When and where did SLUGGER form? Can you tell us a bit about the band?

Hey man! Sorry for the long reply on this one, been a really busy summer for us so far! First off thanks for doing this interview, it really means a lot, Victoria is one of my favorite spots I’ve ever played so it’s cool to reconnect. I’m Tommy and I front the fucker, Clay plays guitar and helps write the bones of the material and Justin plays bass/makes the songs listenable haha. For drums and second guitar, we kind of rotate around, but we’ve been playing live with the homie Elliot on drums and Bryan on second guitar. Without Bryan, this band wouldn’t be shit, he has done so much design work for us I don’t think we’ll ever be able to repay him, so it’s worth noting, plus he rips. I tried getting a band like Slugger together for a long time and under a few different names but it never really clicked. I always had a bunch of other projects going so it was always kind of on the back burner. Me and Clay had been playing together a lot and when Class System got back from a Midwest tour, me and Clay spent a lot of time in the woods jamming Creedence and shit and with all the bullshit happening in this state and this country, we just kinda got pushed towards doing a band that was earnest as hell and had something to say.

We’re all in our 20s. Me and Clay live in Chico, California, although we are both from small towns in the mountains nearby. We’ve been in bands together since he was in high school and I was like 19 or 20, but most recently we were in Class System, The Choice (with Bryan as well) and D-FY. Justin is from San Diego/Santa Cruz, he was in Drain for a while and we all stomped around in Chico and the Bay Area for years hitting shows/DJ nights, skating and jamming etc. Elliot would always kick it with us too, and he has been a down ass Bay head for years so it was a no-brainer to hit him up to play with us too. Basically it’s just Northern California skinhead shit, except Bryan, but he’s honorary and we always remind him hahaha.

So far for those of us not in the California area, what we can listen to are two tracks from a promo tape for a soon(?) to be released 10″. What have been people’s reactions to the tunes who maybe haven’t seen the band live, and how did you hook up with LSM and TASM for the release? Also, how would you try to describe your sound/influences to someone who hasn’t listened to you yet?

The Slugger recording had been a long time coming. Like I said, I’ve known that I’ve wanted to do a band like this for years and me and Clay would fuck around and record demos here and there but we could never get it together due to all the other stuff we had going at the time. Finally, shit lined up and Justin was up visiting from Santa Cruz and heard one or two tracks and pretty much forced me and Clay to do a legit demo recording with all three of us. That recording took place a few weeks later at a house in Chico, California (Chapmantown) called Moonstomp Manor. We used one mic for everything, mixed it as best we could, had the boy Miles master it, and I threw it out on the ‘gram to see if anybody would pick it up and put it out on tape. Alex from Castillo and Repeat Offender, another dude who we wouldn’t exist without, put us on with Longshot Records/TASM Records and now those recordings are becoming a 10-inch, which blows my fucking mind to be honest. People have been really into it live as well which is really humbling, we’ve gotten a lot of props and it means a lot. In terms of style man, we have a lot of influences. The shit I’m most directly trying to channel is like some pissed-off rock n roll shit. Me and Clay both fuck with the Stones and Creedence (of course) but we also like The Templars and Oi of all flavors/nations. There’s too many bands, old and new, to list that really influenced us, but to me personally, you really can’t beat Sham. That boy sounded like he had something to get off his chest and he fucking meant it. Not many bands make the hair on the back of my neck stand up; Sham 69 hits like that now for me just like it did when I was 9 years old. We all obviously like Reggae and Rocksteady as well, probably because, like Oi, it’s one of those styles that has a direct line to what-the-fuck is really up. It’s authentic music, and it’s music that matters, regardless of who you are.

What have been your favourite bands that you’ve had the pleasure of sharing a stage with so far?

Oh man! Shout out to Weekend Kids! A couple of the dudes from that band are old friends of mine, Portland always gets down and playing with them in Oakland was fun as hell. Straight forward ass Oi, great riffs, catch them if you get a chance it’s some certified big boss shit.

It’s funny, so far we’ve only played two shows but all the bands have been awesome. To be honest though, I think our collective highlight was playing with the Chisel. I’m not humble, that band is great, like truly great. Those lyrics fucking mean something, which is beyond refreshing, and they’re speaking about a lot of the same shit that’s going on here, so it felt like a special thing to share that stage. Killed it live too, I hit more stage dives at that show than at any other combined in my career. Some sick ass HC bands on the bill too, lots of friends, hella slamming, it was a perfect fucking show. Definitely the type of stuff we all envisioned for this band.

The bouncy, simple hook-laden rocker “I Ain’t A Sucker” immediately caught my attention when I heard it – could you elaborate on the lyrics?

Plain and simple man, I’m sick of seeing my friends and other working-class kids getting conned into supporting fascist bullshit. Doesn’t matter how you paint it up, we all know where all this nationalist shit in the Skinhead scene came from, and if you have half a brain cell you can see who the real threat to our freedom is. Don’t get me wrong, fuck authoritarianism in ALL forms, but you’re fooled if you think that some comic-book-commie is gonna come into your bedroom at night and steal what little you have. I grew up seeing kids in my school fall into prison nazi shit, a system encouraged and maintained by the pigs and judges. Then when the trump shit happened I saw fools on some wacked-out internet shit get radicalized by stupid ass memes and get fully into the jackoff from there. Now, look at how these motherfuckers are stacking the government, how these motherfuckers have all the guns; like you’re really gonna stand in the biggest systematic rightward shift in our nation’s history, fraught with extremist violence and touting civil war and tell me that both sides are somehow equal? I don’t ascribe to any kind of ideological dogma, that shit Is largely tired and useless at the point we’re at/heading to, but who is the real fucking threat? It’s not the immigrants who build this country, and it’s certainly not some left-wing boogeyman. It is who it’s always-fucking – been: a parasite class of businessmen and politicians who squeeze the worker dry and convince them to blame somebody else. We have to end this cycle, starting right here in our own scene.

And skinhead politics are always confusing and I’m not gonna pretend to be an authority on how it truly is out here, but all I know is what I see and what I see in California at this point, aside from the scarce non-trump right-wing head, the line has kind of been drawn here in terms of fascists and non-fascists due to trump taking the republican party and fulfilling its destiny as thee premier redneck fascist shit fest. Most far-right skinheads (who are/were involved in the scene, not just street tweaker peckerwoods) either turn into proud boy juggalos or internet weirdos and drop off into obscurity due to fear of getting fucked up. I still see people flirt big time with RAC shit tho, from skins to spikey punks. Don’t let you or your homies get fooled.

There seem to be a number of newer California bands (Castillo are the other immediate one to mind) with younger members – do you think the younger generation of those playing in current Oi! bands have more crossover with the hardcore and punk scenes than older skins? Why do you think that is?

Oh man absolutely. A lot of the current CA skinhead scene came from the Hardcore scene straight up. You gotta remember, the first American skinhead music was Hardcore, but once the two-tone scene and a homegrown Oi/Street Punk scene got going shit seemed to have split quite a bit. But Skinheads are/have always been a staple in USHC on both coasts, and that tradition in connection to anti-racism runs deep down here.

Growing up in California, every decent sized city has some kind of hardcore scene, it’s like a working-class youth tradition out here along with Hip Hop and shit so I think a lot of kids, myself included, got involved on that level because we couldn’t get into 21+ Oi/Street Punk shows and DJ Nights. In the 2010s, the USHC scene had a mini British invasion with bands like The Flex and Violent Reaction, and there was kind of a boot boy renaissance. People started digging into Oi again and starting HC bands informed by Oi (but mostly 86 Mentality), and when people turned 21 there was like this huge cross-pollination, at least in California, between Hardcore, Oi, Reggae/Rocksteady Dj stuff and working class youth culture in general. People criticize American Skinheads, and I think especially California Skinheads for being too non-traditional or whatever but out here we boast one of the earliest traditional scenes in the country (Boots and Booze magazine), and in my opinion what is going on right now with California and Skinhead shit is what’s helping keep the movement fresh and relevant in an era of throwaway culture. Like it or not, California is gonna do what it does and its gonna be loud as hell about it so come out and party or fuck off hahaha.

So if I were to list California bands with younger Skinheads in them I’d probably have to list close to like 20+ hardcore bands right now. Younger Oi bands in California are much more rare, but I would say that Castillo is definitely on top for me right now. There’s a newer band too, Prison Tatt that is from central California that is worth checking out they have a sick demo. Aside from that, I’m not sure, but if you’re in a younger California Oi band and you’re reading this hit us up let’s play some shows. Over on the east coast though you got Violent Way, and I would definitely shout them out as a band that is kicking ass and keeping shit fresh. Midwest too you got Mean Mugs from Minneapolis, a band not enough people fuck with to be honest. I would like to see more young Oi bands crop (ha) up though, again if you have one hit us up!

Give us a general top 10 of contemporary Oi! bands, as seen by the Slugger camp.

Alright I might take a little liberty with this one in terms of the time period, but I think the general consensus is something like:

Crown Court
Rixe
MESS
Castillo
Béton armé
Dusters
No Class
Violent Way
The Chisel
Roughed Up
AC/DC

Where is on the Slugger tour hitlist, where are you most looking forward to playing?

Me and Clay want to go back out to the Midwest really bad, nobody gets down like Midwesterners. All of us want to check out the East Coast too, and maybe hit chunks of Canada on either/both of those potential runs to see friends and hang out in the mountains because we all like that shit.

We all talk about Europe a lot too, and I think that’s our big prize. We all kind of came up when bands like Lions Law were first breaking so to me the European scene looks like Skinhead heaven or something, so we’ll see If we make the cut! Right now with gas and plane tickets, it seems like our best bet is doing one off shows/fests around the US, so if you got one and wanna book us, hit us up on the sluggstagram: @californiaslugger

Final comments, shout outs?

Arranging dental plans for fascist fucks is a Skinhead tradition, don’t let down those who came before you.

When, where and why did Lost Legion form?

I started the band in 2014 with this guy Griff. I played guitar and sang, he played bass. We’d both been in a bunch of bands, but none I think your readers would know. We were into the old Vulture Rock bands and wanted to actually sound like that instead of the more polished sound a lot of bands were doing at the time. The two of us practiced a couple of times and then Griff moved to Colorado, but right before he left he introduced me to Dave. The three of us recorded the songs from the first demo on the day Dave and I met so that demo is from the only actual practice we ever had. 

Griff recorded the drums and bass for the Autoproduktion tape in Denver with some guy I’d never met who clearly wasn’t into Oi!, and then sent it to me to record vocals and guitar. I like the songs I wrote for it, but don’t like how the songs turned out. I don’t think the drums fit the songs at all and wish we could have worked them out together. 

I don’t know whatever happened with that other drummer, but we got asked to do a couple of records and I linked back up with Dave to do drums here. We wrote and recorded a 7” for Hardware Records, but Griff flaked out on recording bass parts and it never came out. In hindsight, we shoulda just finished it without him. Dave and I are good friends now and live in the same building, and during the quarantine, I wrote a lot of songs I felt were a continuation of the stuff we’d done before, so we decided to revive the name and get our friend Kyle from Fuerza Bruta/Brick Assassin/Flatfoot 56 to play bass. 

Some friends have helped out with additional vocals. Christine from Daylight Robbery and Primitive Teeth does vocals on the cover of the song “Tonite” (by the Go-Go’s) and Matheus from Fuerza Bruta has recorded secondary vocals on a few songs.

I can only assume you have heard a Templars comparison for the first few releases, with the first one being slightly more upbeat, then a bit of a rawer and more aggressive feel for Autoproduktion – what bands would you say were influencing your writing for this period of the band?

When we did Autoproduktion I was really getting into stuff like Stevie Wright and Coloured Balls. Since we wrote the stuff from different cities and the songs were recorded separately I really don’t know what *they* were going for. I feel like the tape would have been way different had either of our very different ideas actually panned out. I think Griff wanted it to sound like Condemned 84. 

The philosophy has always been to just run with it and see how the song turns out rather than try to nail down an exact sound, so I don’t think we sound much like our influences other than the Templars. The guitars on the first demo are 100% Templars. When somebody does something perfect you just follow that road for a while until you find your own way, ya know? 

Your new 10″ EP, “Bridging Electricity” has recently come out – at least to my ears, the sound has progressed loads in addition to dropping the lo-fi recording style. Rather than bringing to mind lo-fi 90s US classics, this sounds much more similar to current bands like Vis Vires and Legion 76 to me – how has the inspiration for the band changed in the few years between releases?

I learned a lot about recording in the years between starting the band and working on Bridging Electricity. I also wasn’t great at guitar when the early Lost Legion stuff came out, but after doing some really bad shows with Fuerza Bruta and not wanting to embarrass myself anymore I started taking music a little more seriously, so I learned more about my gear and started practicing pretty much every day. During quarantine, I was playing guitar basically all day some days and learning all I could about recording. Part of the “new” sound with Lost Legion is me leaning into that and trying to challenge myself.

The song “Bridging Electricity” was originally written to be a Fuerza Bruta song and I think you can hear that. “The Game” is one I wrote lyrics for first, and I didn’t think it made sense for Fuerza Bruta, so I initially offered it to Fizzy from the Royal Hounds/NYC Hounds. The lyrics are really personal and Fizzy is somebody that really got what it was about, but it never panned out and then that band ended in such a tragic, sudden way. I quit Fuerza Bruta soon after that, and that was the first song Dave and I worked out after I felt a little more free to do stuff. 

Also if you could talk about how you hooked up with Mike Jo for the release//give deets on how people can get ahold of the record – listened a few times thru now, enjoying it more every time, especially Tonite. Love the call-and-response stuff, and those additional vocals are fucking great!

Thanks! I first corresponded with Mike from Longshot about 16 years ago. He probably doesn’t even remember. I put out a record for my old hardcore band Korova and he traded me a stack of Longshot releases for a bunch of copies of that 7”. A couple of years ago I got hooked up with him again through Matt from the band Junto, and we check in with each other every once in a while. He’s a sincere guy with good taste that runs a great label! I sent him a couple of drum machine demos I was working on in 2020 and he said he’d be into doing a record. 

Unfortunately, the record has been in limbo for a while because getting vinyl pressed is taking forever. We sent it to the plant in January and still don’t have them yet. The first press sold out as a preorder, so when I get my copies they’ll be mailed out right away. Sorry State will have a few copies. There will be a second press on clear vinyl that’s going to be a co-release between Longshot and Try and Stop Me Records in Germany. 

Also, Under Watchful Eyes is doing a 7” version that I’m sure will look amazing like the rest of his stuff. I don’t know many details on that yet, but hopefully it will be out this summer. 

Has Lost Legion managed to gig very often since the formation of the band? What have been some of your favourite gigs to date? Can you tell us a bit about the punk/Oi! scene in Chicago?

We’ve never played a show. The first demo is a live recording, so that’s the closest we’ve ever come. We could do it now since we’re more of a functioning band at this point, but I don’t think there’s much interest in booking us. We’d also have to get two guitarists because there’s no way I’m going to try to play guitar and sing at the same time. 

I honestly don’t know much about what’s going on in Chicago right now. Chicago took COVID restrictions very seriously and we just couldn’t do stuff people were doing in other places. A lot of bands broke up. We’d go to our practice space, which is in a big warehouse building where probably 150 bands practice, and it would be dead silent. It was like that for months on end. There are definitely active bands going now, but I haven’t quite found my way back to a lot of shows lately. 

To my knowledge, there aren’t many DIY spaces actively booking punk/oi/hardcore these days. 10-15 years ago it seemed like there were always dozens of houses doing shows, but in the last few years most of those spots have dried up for different reasons, and then COVID really fucked things up. There were some cool outdoor shows during quarantine that did feel like “old” Chicago shows, and I hope that keeps up even though things are sorta back to normal and people don’t *need* to do outdoor shows now. 

There’s a younger hardcore scene that I know is doing their own thing and putting on some shows, but that generation is into a style of hardcore that I never developed an appreciation for. I’m glad they’re having fun, but I don’t dig Nu Metal or that real chuggy style of jock hardcore. 

Chicago/NWI does have some cool bands. Mock Execution are good guys. Man Eaters are a lot of fun. The Conservative Military Image demo is cool and he seems to be consistently putting stuff out now. I love that “I’m Not Your Skinhead” song. Liquids are a very cool and weird band from Indiana. Fighting for Scraps are from the south side and are good guys that seem to have been around forever. Splatter Pattern are great UK82 kinda band that’s split between Chicago and Milwaukee. Milwaukee also has a killer death metal band called Pig’s Blood. False Negative are from Bloomington and are untouchable. Primitive Teeth and Riesgo are our friends/neighbors. Consensus Madness are also cool! Members of Dog Flashback and Udusic – both good bands. Canal Irreal did an LP on Beach Impediment, so I’m sure lots of people know them. I just saw them for the first time in a while and they were great. Their guitarist, Scott Plant, just released a solo EP that I really dig. I recorded some new demos for Fuerza Bruta with their new guitarist recently and the new songs are really good. I always say I don’t know any bands and then will name 50 bands I like. 

Dave and I do little side projects besides Lost Legion like Cenobite (HC with Portuguese vocals – https://cenobitebites.bandcamp.com) and War Effort (d beat – https://wareffort.bandcamp.com). Those are literally bands where we’ve just gone in and jammed out a demo in a day with friends. Not sure if that should count as current Chicago bands, but War Effort will actually be playing a couple shows. 

You also ran Foreign Legion Records, a DIY label that put out some top-tier stuff from 2015-2019. What made you decide to release the first few records?

I still sorta do Foreign Legion. I’ve released a few tapes in the last couple of years to avoid the awkward conversation of asking another label if they’d be interested in putting out something I did and to promote stuff I like that my friends put out. I’ve done some reissues for Komintern Sect and Nabat, and tapes for Dog Flashback from Chicago and Society’s Bane from Alabama. 

The idea for the label started when I used to do a zine around 2013. Oi! kinda sucked in the US at the time. A lot of bands started forming at once and a lot of them felt really insincere. None of it even sounded like Oi!, it was just pop-punk or mediocre hardcore dressed up in Fred Perry. 

At the time Chicago also wasn’t a fun place and everybody hated each other. There were opposing skinhead crews (not really because of politics, but just neighborhood sets that didn’t get along). I didn’t mind it at the time because I was miserable and loved to wallow in it. I was just kind of a piece of shit that drank too much and got into fights all the time. I finally got sick of that and decided to put my energy into doing the zine because it’d force me to look for stuff I really enjoyed. I made three issues and linked up with a lot of people, and that turned into the label. I was in a hardcore band called Snake Handler at the time, so I did our 7” and a record for a young skin band from Indiana called Public Assault that I really loved. I got a lot out of promoting bands I thought were overlooked, so I stuck with it. 

In one week at the end of 2018, my girlfriend broke up with me and moved out, I got hit with thousands of dollars in medical bills, had to sell my record collection, and a guy working at a pressing plant bootlegged one of my releases. I had to cancel two releases I was excited about because I just couldn’t afford it, and something about getting ripped off by someone in the punk/Oi! scene really took the fight out of me, so I just stopped making plans for releases. Even now that I’ve done more releases I still refer to it in the past tense. 

If you had to narrow it down to 3, which would you say were your favourite releases to have done and why?

I don’t know if I have a top 3, but I’ll try. I’ll always love that Public Assault record. Those kids really re-lit my fire for USHC. I still kinda consider them all younger siblings. The Blystex tape will always hold a spot in my heart. I love both releases on their own, but one thing about those records is that Toski from Public Assault went on to be in Blystex, so they’ll always be connected in my mind and sort of illustrate a progression in how I thought about the label. Both bands were really important to me for different reasons while they were active. 

Number one, though, would be I’ve Got the Bible Belt Around My Throat, a comp I did of Alabama bands. It was by far the most labor-intensive and rewarding project. It took several years to get all the audio and a few more years to track down some of the bands. It brought a lot of outside attention to the label and even wound up in an archive of southern culture at a college in Mississippi. I hate people that went to college, but that was a funny form of validation. 

I met a lot of old guys through doing that and had some really amazing conversations while interviewing bands. Clay, the singer of the band the Ether Dogs, had such an interesting life and I’m so grateful I got to talk with him before he died earlier this year. Still thankful for what I was able to learn from him and the other people that supported that project. 

That record also led to me being able to work with Rave Up records in Italy to release an LP the Ether Dogs recorded in the early 80s, which was a huge deal to the guys in the band. I’m glad Clay got to see it! 

What’s your opinion of the current state of Oi! bands, both in the US and internationally? What have been 5-10 records that have come out in recent years that you have gotten excited about? 

I don’t pay attention like I used to. I’m sure there are lots of cool bands doing stuff that I’m not aware of. I really dig Cuero from Spain and Mess from Mexico. Montreal seems to be where it’s at these days; there are always good recordings coming out of there. Your comp is great, I really dig the Toy Tiger stuff, and of course Bootlicker. FREEWAYS from Canada kill it! I know it’s not Oi! The Puffer demo is sick. I love Violent Way because they would fit right in on a GMM comp from the 90s. They seem like good guys, and I like to see a younger band really carry that torch. The US needs at least one band like that. The Claimed Choice LP is really cool. It’s good to see France is still at the top of its game. 

What bands got you into everything in a spiralling effect – was it more the hardcore or punk side of things that you got involved initially? What was the scene like in your hometown?

I’ve been a skin since I was 14. I lived in Alabama, which felt pretty isolated back then. There was a massive skin scene there that was dying out right around when I showed up. HBO did a documentary on the white power scene in my hometown called “Skinheads USA” and some of those guys still hung out and caused problems. It was a scary place to be a skin that was openly anti-racist, and I imagine there are still small cities like that in the US. I have some funny (in hindsight) stories, but looking back it’s so weird I stuck with it because there were old dudes that legit wanted to kill me and my friends. That definitely informed my mindset for the rest of my life. Now I have a 15-year-old and am so thankful he’s not into any of this stuff. 

I wasn’t even into Oi!, I was only into old hardcore. Negative Approach, Agnostic Front, FEAR, the Effigies, etc were my favorite bands back then. I went to a lot of shows and wasn’t into most newer bands I saw, so I started writing to bands in Maximum Rock n Roll to try to get them to play Birmingham, and one of the bands gave my contact info to Mark from the Hudson Falcons, who I got to come to town when I was 16. Through them and this guy Barron (who is still in a good band down there called Skeptic?) I got into the GMM Records scene. I was only a couple hours away from Atlanta and that scene was in full swing. I made friends with Chet from Adolf and the Piss Artists, and through him I met guys in Templars, Condemned 84, Anti Heros, etc, and those guys got me into a lot of good music. I mail-ordered some stuff from a label in Georgia and when he found out I was only 16 he mailed me tapes of the old Oi Core records releases which really changed the way I saw oi music. Bands like the Uprise were a lot more interesting to me than the British stuff I’d heard before. 

When I was 17 this guy Ellis showed up in Birmingham that had been in the infamous all-black skin crew from Washington DC that was run by that woman Lefty. If you ever read the book American Hardcore they mention her. He was the first real oi fanatic that I got to be good friends with and he got me into Japanese and South American Oi!, which is about when I started to really get obsessed with it. It felt really exotic, but it also felt like I had this weird connection to people on the other side of the world through the dumb music. 

What do you think of Canadian Oi! bands? Being not TOO far from the border, have you guys had a decent amount of Canadian bands coming thru over the years from Ontario, Quebec etc? 

Nope. I can’t recall a Canadian Oi! band playing Chicago since I’ve been here. SHIT from Toronto have played here a couple times. Prowlers played Minneapolis around 2015 and we played with Beton Arme in Milwaukee in 2019, but that’s all I can think of. We played Toronto when I was in Fuerza Bruta and I met a few folks up there. I really liked that band Hired Goons from Toronto, but their singer Kevin told me the rest of the guys were too scared to play Oi! shows, which I thought was hilarious at the time. I feel like a lot of people who play Oi! shouldn’t be playing Oi!, and I like that they just admitted it.

I did a record for Ultra Razzia a few years ago, and Marty from that band and the Prowlers introduced me to some cool local bands after that so I’ve kept paying attention to that scene. 

What’s in the future for Lost Legion//final comments?

We just finished a new EP and are sorting out the release. We have about 13 songs in various stages of completion. We might do an LP, but we’ll probably do a string of EPs and keep going long as folks want to release records for us. If someone asked us to do something really cool that made sense timewise we’d make it happen, but I’d rather put my energy into writing/recording and releasing records because that’s what’s fun for me. Kyle and Dave like playing live. They’ll win the argument eventually. 

Thanks for the interview!