100 Words Or Less: The Podcast

We sit down with Abel Abarca, frontman of Big Ass Truck I.E. ; the Inland Empire hardcore wrecking crew that went from a tour joke about semi-trucks to signing with Nuclear Blast Records. Abel traces his path from a teenager who hated screaming vocals to a reluctant frontman, his time in the military, and the band's rapid rise from local shows to festivals like Sound & Fury and Warped Tour. They dig into the IE hardcore scene, the band's Latino roots and anti-ICE activism, the Nuclear Blast signing, and how a band nobody took seriously became impossible to ignore.ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS Weekly Recommendation Playlist brought to you by Evil GreedApple MusicSpotify Subscribe to the podcast on YouTubeRockabilia sells you officially licensed Merch from ALL your favorite bands (and your Dad's favorite band, your siblings etc...). Use the promo code 100WORDSORLESS for 10% off your order. Get 10% off your Evil Greed order by using the code MERCHISLIFE (for a limited time only) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Andrew Neufeld has been in a hardcore band for most of his life. He was fronting Figure Four in Winnipeg while still young, picked up a guitar in Comeback Kid so he could stop singing, and then ended up back on the mic anyway. Twenty-five years later, he is still out there doing it.On this episode, we talk about what it means to be a lifer, and what it takes to keep going when the road never really ends. We go into why the Royal Albert became so important to that scene in Winnipeg. We also get into his upbringing, the strange detours between tours, and where he thinks hardcore is headed now that everyone is paying attention.ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS Weekly Recommendation Playlist brought to you by Evil GreedApple MusicSpotify Subscribe to the podcast on YouTubeRockabilia sells you officially licensed Merch from ALL your favorite bands (and your Dad's favorite band, your siblings etc...). Use the promo code 100WORDSORLESS for 10% off your order. Get 10% off your Evil Greed order by using the code MERCHISLIFE (for a limited time only) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before Have a Nice Life became one of the great cult bands of its era, Dan Barrett was a theatre kid from Glastonbury, Connecticut, who found his way into the state’s hardcore scene as the vocalist of In Pieces. The band released three albums between 2000 and 2005, and somewhere along the way he ended up meeting Jamey Jasta’s dad, a story that says a lot about how small and interconnected the Connecticut scene was.While In Pieces was still active, Dan and Tim Macuga started Have a Nice Life in Middletown. The songs that became Deathconsciousness were written in the aftermath of his father’s death, and in 2003 he founded Enemies List Home Recordings just to get the record out. It arrived in 2008 to almost no attention, then spread through message boards until it became a cult classic.For years the band barely existed live. After a few early shows, including an Alcest support slot in 2010, they disappeared for seven years before returning in 2017 with a full band, which led to Sea of Worry, a full Deathconsciousness set at Roadburn, and this year’s Nothing Will Ever Go Wrong tour.In this conversation, Dan talks about the stage instincts he brought into hardcore, his time with In Pieces and Have a Nice Life at the same time, the aliases that let him say different things, and what it’s like to hear strangers sing back songs written entirely alone.ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS Future Wave Zine CultureWeekly Recommendation Playlist brought to you by Evil GreedApple MusicSpotify Subscribe to the podcast on YouTubeRockabilia sells you officially licensed Merch from ALL your favorite bands (and your Dad's favorite band, your siblings etc...). Use the promo code 100WORDSORLESS for 10% off your order. Get 10% off your Evil Greed order by using the code MERCHISLIFE (for a limited time only) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Steve Looker has been playing guitar in Morning Again since the Florida straight edge and vegan scene of the mid-90s, a band that helped define metallic hardcore on Revelation Records. Before that, he played in xOutcastx alongside future Morning Again vocalist Kevin Byers, then left to join sister band Culture, which set the whole story in motion.In this conversation, we talk about growing up in that scene, the long path from the original run to the Survival Instinct era, writing songs from a distance, and what life looks like outside the band.PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS Weekly Recommendation Playlist brought to you by Evil GreedApple MusicSpotify Subscribe to the podcast on YouTubeRockabilia sells you officially licensed Merch from ALL your favorite bands (and your Dad's favorite band, your siblings etc...). Use the promo code 100WORDSORLESS for 10% off your order. Get 10% off your Evil Greed order by using the code MERCHISLIFE (for a limited time only) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jared Hart grew up in North Jersey in a family of art teachers, and it shows in how he’s approached music for more than two decades. Between The Scandals, Mercy Union, his solo work and running Mt. Crushmore Records, he’s built a career the way a lot of people in this world do, by hand and on the road.In this conversation, Jared talks about coming up in North Jersey, what it means to be raised in a household that takes making things seriously, and why Germany has become such a meaningful place for him as a touring musician. It’s a conversation about where you come from, the rooms that take you in, and the long drives in between.PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS Weekly Recommendation Playlist brought to you by Evil GreedApple MusicSpotify Subscribe to the podcast on YouTubeRockabilia sells you officially licensed Merch from ALL your favorite bands (and your Dad's favorite band, your siblings etc...). Use the promo code 100WORDSORLESS for 10% off your order. Get 10% off your Evil Greed order by using the code SPOOKY (for a limited time only) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rise and Fall's Bjorn Dossche joins the show to talk about leading Wrong Man into their Deathwish full length debut, and the conversation goes deeper than expected. He breaks down why the mix is where a record actually lives or dies, not just the songs underneath it. He talks about watching hardcore cycle back around on itself generation after generation, and why that's never bothered him. And he opens up about mortality being the unlikely thing that pulled Rise and Fall back together after all these years.PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS Weekly Recommendation Playlist brought to you by Evil GreedApple MusicSpotify Subscribe to the podcast on YouTubeRockabilia sells you officially licensed Merch from ALL your favorite bands (and your Dad's favorite band, your siblings etc...). Use the promo code 100WORDSORLESS for 10% off your order. Get 10% off your Evil Greed order by using the code SPOOKY (for a limited time only) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ari Katz has spent over three decades inside hardcore and punk, first as the singer of Lifetime, the New Brunswick band that quietly rewired what a hardcore song could be about, then through Zero Zero, and later behind the counter at Black Cat Records. On this episode of 100 Words Or Less, Ari looks backward: the DFA scene, the New York hardcore bands that set the bar in the late '80s and early '90s, and what it took for a band from Jersey to write something personal in a scene built on toughness. A conversation about influence, lineage, and the records that made this whole thing worth doing.PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS Weekly Recommendation Playlist brought to you by Evil GreedApple MusicSpotify Subscribe to the podcast on YouTubeRockabilia sells you officially licensed Merch from ALL your favorite bands (and your Dad's favorite band, your siblings etc...). Use the promo code 100WORDSORLESS for 10% off your order. Get 10% off your Evil Greed order by using the code SPOOKY (for a limited time only) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bryan Garris, vocalist of Knocked Loose, one of the most talked-about hardcore bands to come out of the last decade. He first sat down on the show in 2017, when the band was still an "upstart" fielding as much online debate as praise. Nine years later, they've released a Grammy-nominated record, toured arenas with Metallica and Gojira, collaborated across genres (Poppy, Chris Motionless, Denzel Curry), and become one of the rare hardcore bands to break through to a genuinely mainstream audience, controversy and all. Along the way there's also been real physical toll: a van accident on tour and a bout of Bell's Palsy that he pushed through mid-run. This conversation revisits where he started and checks in on what's changed.PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS Weekly Recommendation Playlist brought to you by Evil GreedApple MusicSpotify Subscribe to the podcast on YouTubeRockabilia sells you officially licensed Merch from ALL your favorite bands (and your Dad's favorite band, your siblings etc...). Use the promo code 100WORDSORLESS for 10% off your order. Get 10% off your Evil Greed order by using the code SPOOKY (for a limited time only) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eric Stenman has spent three decades on the other side of the glass, quietly shaping records for Deftones, Weezer, Thrice, Dashboard Confessional, and Senses Fail, while building AWOLNATION's entire catalog alongside Aaron Bruno since 2011. Before any of that, he was a teenager in Sacramento, self-funding vinyl pressings on his own credit card inside a scene that also produced Deftones, Far, Will Haven, and Death Grips.Now he's finally the one holding the guitar. The Barbarians of California, his band with Bruno, released their debut album And Now I'm Just Gnashing My Teeth and is about to open a couple of dates on Guns N' Roses' 2026 tour, a long way from a home studio with barely any gear in it.We get into the Sacramento scene that shaped him, the reunion with Bruno after a decade apart, his stories from recording Cake, what it means to walk onto a stadium stage after thirty years of building other people's. PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS Weekly Recommendation Playlist brought to you by Evil GreedApple MusicSpotify Subscribe to the podcast on YouTubeRockabilia sells you officially licensed Merch from ALL your favorite bands (and your Dad's favorite band, your siblings etc...). Use the promo code 100WORDSORLESS for 10% off your order. Get 10% off your Evil Greed order by using the code SPOOKY (for a limited time only) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mike Morales grew up skateboarding and playing in a power violence band in Lompoc, a small Central Coast town far from any real scene, before those friendships pulled him into Initiate. We trace that path into the band, into writing Cerebral Circus (the record where Initiate let acoustic guitars and huge choruses sit next to their heaviest material), and into what it's like touring with a band now spread across three states. Mike also gets into the gap between what a band looks like online and what it actually feels like from inside the van, plus watching hardcore grow up around Initiate since 2016.Long Live Andy Williams PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS Weekly Recommendation Playlist brought to you by Evil GreedApple MusicSpotify Subscribe to the podcast on YouTubeRockabilia sells you officially licensed Merch from ALL your favorite bands (and your Dad's favorite band, your siblings etc...). Use the promo code 100WORDSORLESS for 10% off your order. Get 10% off your Evil Greed order by using the code NEVERSLEEP (for a limited time only) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.