36 Crazyfists – Brock Lindow

One of the first things that strikes the listener when experiencing Lanterns, the newie from long-running Alaskan powerhouse 36 Crazyfists, especially when opener Death Eater explodes from the speakers, is the sheer anger with which this band still delivers their music, almost a quarter of a century into their career. Singer and main man Brock Lindow has a relatively simple explanation as to where all that angst emanates from.

“Aww man, just a couple of unfortunate miss-steps in my own personal life, I think that’s where the anger comes from!” He laughs.

Indeed, the band had a solid four to five year hiatus leading up to the release of their last record, 2015’s appropriately titled Time and Trauma, after having been very reliable with their releases prior to that. It was some of those personal issues that caused the band to need to take some time out from their regular schedule.

“Yeah, we weren’t doing as much as we had in the past during that time,” he concurs, “for various reasons, myself and our bass player Mickey, we both lost our Moms, and just getting a little bit closer to family. Certain things in life just become a little bit more important, it was just a good time to re-charge the batteries.”

And those times have come out in a very strong and personal way in the lyrics and imagery of the album. “Yep, it’s definitely a pretty personal record, about my life,” he explains, “it usually is, since I write all the words, but this one for has got some personal tragedy here and there, and then also just trying to find a way to get out of that and finding the right tools to move forward instead of backward.”

All that said however, Lanterns is definitely no one-dimensional heavy, angry album, there is still plenty of dynamic variety going on within its grooves, and Lindow confirms that this is always very important to them when creating a new 36 record. “We try to get a good balance of everything, all the emotions are there,” he says, “the dark, moody sexy rock vibe, the anger, the fast, the slow, the acoustic and what have you. I think we covered all the ground that we tried to cover on this one.”

The band is currently touring the length and breadth of North America with fellow U.S. heavy hitters Devildriver, before heading out again on their own headliner in support of the new record. Lindow is very confident that they will make a return visit to Australia on this album/tour cycle. “End of January, we start back up, head to the UK and Europe and then onto Australia and Japan,” he states, “definitely looking forward to coming back to Australia, we didn’t get there on the last album. It’s one of our favourite places for sure.”

“Our Australian fans have been neglected, and we don’t like that, so we have to make up for that.”

He has a very standout memory from one of the band’s previous tours Down Under. “The last time I was there my little girl was two, and she’s eight now. I actually brought her there, there’s some cool footage of her, I brought her out to the front of the stage in front of I don’t know how many thousands of people at Soundwave. And she still remembers that, I’ve talked to her about it.”

Lindow remains a little gobsmacked by just how much time has passed, and how much water has flowed under the bridge in their musical and personal lives, since the band formed way back in late 1994. “Sometimes you think about it, and you say ‘where did the time go?’” He says, “we’ve just experienced so much together over these years, the ups and downs, the triumphs and tragedies, there’s just been so much life lived. It really resonates with me that this is now much more than a band, it’s much more than the music, it’s a brotherhood, it’s a family. We’ve seen each other get married, get divorced, have children, all these things that we’ve helped each other with and got to enjoy with each other.

“It’s more than half our lives we’ve been in this band now, and I’m proud of that, and I’m super grateful that people are still interested in our band.”

The new album, Lanterns, out September 29th via Spinefarm Records.

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