I've had a short chat with Stief from Justice/Rhythm To The Madness about music and some guitar-related stuff. As you may know, Stief knows how to play his stuff precise and tight - be it some late-80ies Bad Brains stuff or more shredding material like he's doing with Rhythm To The Madness. Beside that, Stief is a cool dude. Go figure.
1. Hi Stief, on 8 March 2008 Justice played their last show. Now, having had some time to look back, what thing you think you will miss the most out of the last five years?
There's a lot of things I might miss about being in Justice, like going on tour or playing cool shows, but I guess those aren't things that are gone forever from my life. I'm still doing bands so I can still look forward to such events, hopefully not in vain.
It must've been around when the 7" came out or maybe the LP, that was a time when there was a lot of new stuff happening allover and people were stoked and it was all coming from the same spirit, so to speak. Riding that wave was the most awesome feeling ever.
Right now I feel like a lot of stuff that's going on, I've seen it before you know, and it doesn't get to me anymore the way it used to do. I kind of dislike that, but I can't complain because when I had the right age and mindset for it, everything was happing in my life.
2. Justice has been a band that’s progressed from the start. Musicwise there has not been anything we couldn’t expect from you guys. Okay, maybe H8000 mosh but besides that?... Has there been a certain point where you just figured out to not really listen to people’s opinions and what not? A point where you told yourselves to try something „new“?
Yea sure, that point was our first practise. Playing hardcore in Belgium at that time meant doing something new. We were out to show Belgium what hardcore was all about, how ignorant/arrogant that may sound now, that was our strength. And from then on we were like babies, absorbing anything we newly encountered we liked and trying to put that in our music. If you're doing music, people's opinions can never matter, I can't even imagine going like "oh wait if we play this part like this, so and so are going to like us better" That's dumb.
3. Your latest output „Live and Learn“ has a lot more rock in it. You know, R-O-C-K! The track that stood out for me the most was the song „Meaningless“. Now, I heard you first recorded the song with your own voice. So, were you responsible for music and lyrics? Are you this kind of bandleader who records melody and arrangement back at home and record it on your own to show it to the band? And since I’m curious, is there any chance to hear the Stief-version of the song?
I was playing around with that riff on my guitar and I came up with a vocal arrangement that sounded cool in my head so I wrote a verse and a chorus to back up my ideas. I went in the studio and tried it out just to see if it would work. Flip liked it a lot so he kept my words and vocal pattern and wrote some more verses for the song. It was his idea to use his voice the way he does on the recordings, real soft, almost talking. I think that was a stroke of genius because it sounds so much better than the way he did it on the demos we recorded with him singing.
You can hear my version on my ipod whenever we see each other.
4. With the music also the musicians progressed. When first seeing you in 2004 the band wasn’t really tight and also the band had other bandmembers. Now, I did have a look at your first 7“ seeing that you recorded drums instead of guitar on it. How and when did that change come and why is it, this band had that many line up changes?
I started playing drums for Justice because I was their only choice, hah. When I saw the opportunity to move to guitar I took it, because I wasn't a real drummer. The reason we had so many line-up chances is because Justice demanded a lot from it's members.
5. Do you think, that if the band had a solid line-up right from the start you could have reached more?
I think we reached everything we could reach, being just a hardcore band in the hardcore-scene. Having line-up changes was part of the growing proces of Justice and it's members personally. So if anything it made us stronger.
6. Soon after you took over on guitars, the band became more melodic. A lick here and there, as well as slowing down the music a little. Were you the driving force behind this progression?
When we were writing elephant skin, we wanted that to be a real hardcore record, so we were bent on writing real hardcore songs. The songs that came more natural for that record were all the slower, groovier, more melodical songs and all the fast songs we got a headache writing them.
So after that record, I was just gonna go with whatever felt natural. I'm sure that if Erik was still in the band that ep would've turned out totally different. But I wasn't going to force this band in writing fast parts and then ending up with songs we weren't going to like.
I was just feeling that that sound was something all the individual members felt right by and that's why it came out like that.
7. Let’s have some guitar-related talk then. When and why did you decide to learn to play? Have you ever took any lessons?
When I was 12 I took some lesson for maybe a year, but I learned most of it by playing in bands.
8. I think that there are mostly two kind of guitar players. The ones who start to play because they want to start a band, who try to figure it out all by themselves but eventually need more time to get to know more besides the kind of music they’re jamin‘… And then you have the ones who start taking lessons in their childhood. They end up covering all the stuff their teachers told them but face troubles by doing their own thing at first. Do you feel familiar with one of the two?
I'm definately the former of the two. The more I play guitar, the more I feel like I can't play at all. I'm always thinking of taking jazz lessons, or just any lessons, but I never do. I def feel I should learn more technical stuff by trying to play stuff from guitarists I like.
9. Is there any guitar player (hardcore or non-hardcore) you kinda look up to? Someone who specifically inspired you in the way you play?
There are a lot of guitar players that I look up to, but there's one that really inspired me to play the way I do and that's Erik Tilburg, our former guitar player. He's not so good technically, but his ideas and riffs are always sooo cool. Hardcore guitar players that I think rule are: Matt Henderson, Walter Schreiffels, Peter Mozes, Porcell, Brian Baker and that other dude from Minor Threat, Gavin Van Vlack, Dr. know...
10. When starting finding THE riff, what guitar and what amp did you have back then?
The first amp I bought was a JCM 900 slx, the first guitar I bought was a Gibson Les Paul studio. Pretty basic stuff.
11. …And what’s your current equipment set-up like right now?
Right now I play a Gibson Les Paul custom through a JCM 800 50 watt reissue and a JMP 100 watt from '79. I use an equalizer to boost my sound and a digital delay to emphasize my leads, Matt from underdog showed me that and he told me he got it from touring with Brian Baker.
12. How important is the right choice of your gear in the beginning?
Nah man, if you're just starting out you have to go through a range of shitty stuff untill you're worthy of decent equipment. You should feel like you earned that gibson, I played a second hand 75 euro worth guitar my entire life until I started a band and then I borrowed a somewhat decent one from our second guitar player. When I started playing for Justice I bought my (Les Paul ) studio.
13. Something that I’ve been noticing for a while is that a lot (if not all) belgium bands use old classy old Marshall amps. I guess they’re not that expensive but to find the right ones could actually take some time. Any idea how to explain the belgium Marshall pre-JCM900 fetish?
Well it's kind of coindidence maybe, I know Cete from rise and fall swears by Marshall, he wouldn't use anything but Gibson, Marshall and Sunn. Michiel from dead stop just used it cause it gives him the sound he was looking for with dead stop I guess. I just use it cause I know I'm going to get an awesome sound without really putting an effort into it. I don't know a lot about gear but I know classic Marshall will give me what I need. I have played 5150's or Mesa's on tour sometimes but they don't give the notes that I play the definition that I want them to have. The sound itself is really thick, but it's also cold and muddy. I know a lot of guys who get a great sound out of those latter amps though, you just have to go with what feels right for yourself.
14. Now, I don’t know about you. But me myself, I always kinda have the same riffs I play during soundcheck. Please name your top 5 if you have any.
Good question, I always switch after every couple of shows, it depends on what I'm listening to. This is my top 5 tough:
AF - victim in pain
Bad Brains - sould craft
Bad Brains - sailin on
Led Zepellin - baby I'm gonna leave you
any new riff I'm working on.
15. Speaking of good tunes. When it comes down to hardcore, which five songs would you choose as examples for perfect riffing. Be it a whole song, a single moshpart or an intro. List them and tell me why?
AF - undertow: Matt Henderson at it's best, so hard, so groovy, so brilliant.
Bad Brains - soul craft: Best riff ever.
Burn - new morality: Listen to that opening part and try not to wish you wrote that.
Leeway - all: from born to expire until adult crash, all awesome riffs.
Justice - born to lose and every inch: Erik Tilburg doing his thing.
16. As a guy who had toured Europa several times and played with tons of other bands from all parts of the world, is there a country out there where you thought that you really hadn’t seen any single person who actually could play his guitar? Are there certain "unprogressed" countries? And what about the opposite?
LOL, not being able to play the guitar isn't determined by what country you live in. I've seen good and bad guitarists all over the world.
17. Justice is done. Rhythm To The Madness, your new band is ready to take over. The music is way harder, can we expect the unexpected the way we could with Justice? Will the Urban Metal converge with Free Jazz?
Nope, RTTM has rules because it's a band in a certain genre, and we're aiming to keep it there. However we are going to try our best to feel out the limits of that genre.
18. Beside Rhythm To The Madness, are there plans for a new band?
Yes, rttm is just something cool to do but it isn't something that flows from deep within my personality. I just try and write music like other bands have done, because I like it, I think it's fun. For example, the cro mags were really hard dudes, so when they wrote music, it obviously turned out to be hard, but I'm just this average kid who lived with his parents his whole life, so I don't have to kid myself that writing hard music is going to make me hard, it's the other way around.
So I'm trying to start up a new band that's basically gonna pick up where Justice left off and I'm gonna try and run with that and see where I end up.
19. I guess we’re done. Stief, thank you for your time. Any closing comments?
How about shoutouts: Iris, Apetown Ghent (kampioenen!), Keyzershof dinner party last saturday, powered records, Union Town and Samrosis.
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