Hi , first off lets get the usual intro stuff done............who’s in the band , what they do? How long you being together and have any of you had previous experiences in bands?
Justice is me (Stief), Flip, Spoiler, Erik and Billy.
This has been a steady line up for about a year now.
Justice has ex members of following bands: In Arm's Reach, Last Straw, The Uncontrollable, The Full Body Cavity Search etc.
What would you describe your sound as for the people who haven't heard you , what's your main influences ?why did you decide to start a band? I saw you had a few member change‘s when you started out, it all sorted now? are you still all friends?
I would tell them we sounded like a mixture of every band on the 'the way it is' comp plus more. We're influenced by everything but I guess mainly by new york hardcore bands from mid to late eigthies. We started out cause we felt like hardcore in Belgium wasn't what it could be nor what it should be. We were sick of going to shows just to hang out and not see any good bands play. Over time our first guitarist decided to quit and I replaced him on second guitar and we've got Billy from this other band I was in to play drums. Everyone is still friends.
Your first EP was released by Dead and gone and Complete control records, it seem to gone down a storm everywhere, how did you cope with the reaction to it?
We were overwhelmed with good reactions, so we try to prove these people right. We tour as much as we can and try to rehearse as much as possible, to stay tight and on point. Nobody is going to be able to say that justice were slackers.
I saw on your site that your LP had just released, How did the recordings go? Did you get good feedback from the promo demo you did for recent tour with righteous jams? What did the demo consist of?
The Lp is being pressed as we speak and should be in distro's in a week or two. I have the feeling we did a good job although we had to rush for it to come out in time for our summer tour. The promo we sold on the RJ tour was just 3 songs from that LP that we did prerecording of in some rehearsal room with an 8-track. A lot of people seem to like 'born to lose' when they hear it live.
How many tracks are on the new LP, did you take any new approach when recording the LP or did you just do what you do?
There's 11 songs on the LP, including a re-recorded version of 'light in the dark' and a 'remix' of 'every inch'. We did those cause we weren't really happy with the way those songs sounded on the 7". Then there are the 3 songs that appeared on the promo tape and than 6 new ones. We tried to balance out the lp as good as possible. There's fast songs, there's mid tempo, there's slow. Just look at the progression we made from the demo to the 7", you can draw that line further to the LP.
It's going to be a self titled one btw.
You’re dealing with quite a few labels at the moment, how did you come to be dealing with Dead and Gone lockin' out?
Ian just offered to put out our cd, because we were just going to do a 7" ourselves, and it seemed like a pretty good idea, I'm glad we did it.
Lockinout was the same thing, we went on tour with Mental, we became friends with them and Greg wanted to put out our stuff in the States.
You have a reputation of being the hardest working band in hardcore, do any of you work? Or is justice a full time effort?
Hah, I wish we could live off justice, that's just not going to happen. All of us work full time or go to school. We just understand that we have the chance to do something special with justice and we make the most out of that. Sometimes it's hard cause of our busy work schedules but we always manage to keep it together. And all our friends always help us out, which we appreciate.
In the last 2 yrs you have toured Europe and the States continuously it seems and played with the some of best bands around, mental, righteous jams, desperate measures, what's the reaction to you in the States like compared to Europe? And what inspires you to work so hard?
It's impossible to compare, cause there's a different hardcore scene every other state(in the usa) or country(in Europe). But we're psyched about playing with these cool bands and hanging out with the awesome kids that play in those bands. But even if the show itself isn't that good, we always make a party out of it. As For working hard, shit its just Something in the water I guess. It's a small country and we're all tight friends, so that helps.
i read that you played posi # 2004 , what was that like? did you witness the brutal carnage the day before heard about? and was there a weird atmosphere the morning you played?
We were at the hotel when the fights started so we didn't catch any of that and the next morning it was as if nothing happened. It's so cool what that guy Bob Macc is doing every year, he must have nerves of steel and work like a horse. It's also cool that he let a small time euroband such as justice play his fest.
Out of all the show’s you’ve played is there any that you could say was the best/ your favourite?
Hard to say, but this years LTF fest was awesome. I couldn't believe it, it shook me up for the rest of the night. During our cover of 'as one' I saw so many people go off, I was so happy being on that stage.
I saw the list of upcoming show’s you have this summer , it was HUGE something like 50 shows in 59 days or something mental like that, how are you going to travel around?
We travel in a van. Try to get the cheapest deal too, touring is expensive, you lose money if you don't handle it the right way. Those two months will be heaven and hell all in one.
So apart from a stupidly huge 2 month tour of Europe and the us promoting the new LP, do justice have anything else planed for the near future?
sure man, we've got tons of idiotic plans like JUSTICE: THE MOVIE, elephant skin single b/w two new songs which Erik wrote but won't show us, JUSTICE: LIVE IN THE DARK LP etc. plus after the summer I want to do more weekend tours. i think we might hit up Portugal first cause we're not going there in the summer.
How long have you been involved in HC? How did you first get involved, what’s your main motivation right now?
We're all involed for about 9 years more or less, erik a bit longer I suppose. Our main motivation? Hardcore, and everything about it is cooler than anything esle I've already did in this life.
What’s the scene in Belgium like? With Belgium and Holland being so close are they joined as one united scene or 2 totally separate things?
It's just the same as anywhere else, we have a lot of friends in Holland. The scene in Belgium is the best. There's the sint niklaas jugend who are like the new kids, they are great in numbers and have TURN THE SCREW as their representative band. But then there's even younger kids coming out of the part of Belgium where the editor of CRUCIAL TIMES fanzine lives, they have no band though. The western part of the country has a scene that's more on it's own, lots of '97 styled metalcore, but there's SHREDDER which is a pretty decent band. And then there's Limburg, Koen who partly wrote the justice demo is from Limburg, he is now in TRUE COLORS, with Packo from BUILDING.
JP is trying to keep it real in Brussels with the occasional awesome show, but there no kids to back him up. The CCR family represents Antwerp and Gent, and also Tilburg but that's Holland.
Who thought of starting CCR? Did you always have plans to put out records for other bands?
CCR started when DEAD STOP and JUSTICE couldn't find the right label to work with and it kind of led up the fact that they both wanted to do it themselves. Because we are all close friends, we didn't have to think too long about the idea to put both releases under one name. When the Restless Youth demo came out, and they started to play out, well, it was so obvious that we wanted them to join along.
How do you choose which bands to work with? Any plans of adding more bands to the roster in the future?
I can't tell you what a band needs to be on CCR, no one can, but I do know that when there is such a band, we'll all know we want to put their record out. We're always on the lookout for a new CCR band.
best thing / worst thing about hardcore ?
Straight edge
What bands should people be listening to? any bands you love to share a stage with?
Listen to minor threat and the bad brains and we'd love to play with Mental again, because it's been too long.
Anything else you would like to add?
Thanks for the interview and make sure you don't forget bands like RISE AND FALL, MENTAL and NO TURNING BACK when you're referring to the 'hardest working bands in hardcore'.
