2007 saw the release of one of my favorite metallic-kissed hardcore albums of its period, Bitter End's Climate of Fear.
Produced by Craig Douglas, the 11-track collection was released on Malfunction Records, a label owned by two stalwarts of the hardcore scene: Tru Pray and Linas Garsys (he's also a celebrated artist/designer).
When it came out, Climate of Fear scratched an itch I've always had for mid-tempo, riffy hardcore in the spirit of Merauder, The Icemen, and Best Wishes-era Cro-Mags. Fitting of its title, the album's lyrics, and overall vibe, is ominous and almost paranoid at times. The record is a potent marriage of groove-driven arrangements and gruff yet clear vocals.
Bitter End vocalist Daniel Rosen, drummer Ely Castillo, bassist Jason Wallace, and guitarists Griffin Jarzombek and Jacob Henderson all took a walk down memory lane to share the story of the making of Climate of Fear with me.
Let’s set the stage for Climate of Fear. You guys played quite a bit of shows and went out on the road by then. Not many hardcore bands do that on just a 7” but you pushed Mind In Chains well. Did you feel like the band was gaining a lot of momentum? I remember Bitter End getting popular rather quickly, but maybe you see it differently?
(Daniel Rosen, vocals): It is all kind of a blur to me. As soon as we released our demo in 2005, we went up the East Coast and into Canada with Iron Age, who had also recently released their demo. Lion of Judah was on a chunk or maybe all of the shows as well. I think most of those shows were also with Lights Out.
Once the 7” came out, I remember we did some shows in Florida. I’m sure a few of those must have been with Kids Like Us, who were a big deal at the time. It is possible that was even just when the demo was out. We went to the West Coast and played a few shows with Think I Care and Like It Or Not. There was definitely more that, I’m not real sure on the exact timeline.
Of course, we also played a ton of shows in Texas with a lot of the touring hardcore bands coming through in that era and also all Texas band bills. I guess to call us popular at that point is a little subjective but we did get some cool opportunities pretty quickly. Two that come to mind are playing the first Sound and Fury fest and the first This Is Hardcore fest in 2006 when we just had the 7” out. Also, just the fact that we released our first 7” on Malfunction Records was pretty exciting for me. I was already a fan of the label’s previous releases.
(Jacob Henderson, guitar): Looking back, we did get traction as a band rather quickly, although I didn’t understand it or even realize it at the time. We were all young (I was 17 when the band started) and didn’t know very much. There were many factors that made It possible to gain momentum. Texas has a great hardcore scene so we were able to play many shows around Texas with other bands like Iron Age, Will to Live, and Die Young.
There was a fest in Houston called Fallcore, and one in Denton called Ridglea Metal and Hardcore Fest. Those fests were special because people into hardcore from all over Texas would travel and go to them. We would have never gotten as far we have without the initial support from everyone in Texas.
Having our 7” put out by Malfunction Records from California definitely helped with our popularity outside of Texas. We also had the opportunity to open some bigger shows at the time with bands like Terror and Comeback Kid in San Antonio. “Popular” is all relative though. To me a “big show” would have been 50 people, and half of those people would be from the other bands playing.
Our second tour was a week-long spring tour to California in 2006, where we played the Chain Reaction in Orange County for the first time and also played the Alpine in Ventura, where Sound and Fury used to be. Those were the biggest shows we had ever played at the time. Our next tour was a full US tour the following summer with Shipwreck and Palehorse. It was exciting and a privilege to do a full US tour, especially with only having a 7”, but many of those shows were not well attended.
That set up the first of many full US tours and the beginning of us touring every year for at least the next 10 years. After our first tour with Iron Age, I remember thinking to myself, “well that was fun, but I probably won’t get the chance to do that ever again.” It turned out we were fortunate to get the chance to tour many times after that.
Malfunction Records released both the EP and Climate of Fear. How did you initially connect with Linas and Tru at the label? How involved were they with Climate of Fear? Did they offer feedback and/or guidance? I know Linas did the artwork.
(Daniel): These questions are quickly illuminating how my memory of certain Bitter End history is fuzzy. I’m fairly certain Scott Vogel (Terror, World Be Free) turned Tru at Malfunction Records onto us. We probably opened some show for Terror in San Antonio when we had a demo out and that is how he heard it.
I remember there was semi-serious talk of Vogel wanting to start a label and put out the 7”. At least I wanted it be a serious possibility, but Scott may have been just joking. Malfunction was involved to the extent that they did all the work to put the music out and get it distributed.
Linas designed the cover and put together both the Climate of Fear and Mind in Chains 7” art / layouts. Also, the vinyl version of CoF came out on Six Feet Under Records.
Before you started working on the songwriting for the album, did the band have any kind of discussion of the stylistic direction you wanted to head in? Did you have a big game plan in that regard or did things just happen organically?
(Daniel): I don’t remember specific conversations, though I am sure we had some. We all loved the bands that are probably obvious listening to Climate of Fear: Sick of It All, Biohazard, Cro-Mags, Life of Agony, Madball, Agnostic Front, etc.
(Griffin Jarzombek, guitar): We definitely had a lot of discussion even since the genesis of the band that we wanted to do a variation of NYHC. We had a bit of a chip on our shoulder being from Texas.
We felt like we could play NYHC better than any other band at the time, other than Iron Age, I guess. It was pretty organic in terms of matching the music to the lyrics, I think we were just all on the same page… Hard riffs, hard rhythms, hard lyrics.
(Ely Castillo, drums): There was never really a type of direction we were going for, it was more like, "hey, this riff sounds good, now Ely come up with a beat." Now, whether we wanted the music to be a fast-paced song or a have some type of groove, that was a majority decision within ourselves. A lot of the final decision was Daniel and Griff/Jacob. Really me and Jason, the bass player, were adding in our input and ideas. It all kinda vibed together somewhat organically. We all know what we wanted to sound like and the amount of inspiration through other bands was off the roof.
(Jacob): Yes, absolutely. There were lots of discussions about the direction we wanted to go in both with the sound of the record and with the themes. We were driving back late at night from a show, I was half asleep in the back of the van, and I remember hearing our bass player Jason say, “We should call our LP Climate of Fear.” I don’t know where he came up with that, or how it got brought it up, but it was the perfect title of a record we were hoping to write.
The idea of adding a sound clip as the first track came early in the brainstorming of the record. We were using other records like Sick of it All ‘Just Look Around’ as a template for what we wanted to create.
The opening track of that record, “We Want the Truth,” has a sound clip of Ronald Reagan and a scene from the movie Cruising with a guitar riff placed behind it. It created such a tension-filled and foreboding sound. We wanted to create that same tension and anxiety for our record. All of that was very intentional with many band discussions of how we would accomplish that.
You can’t have a great hardcore record without great guitar riffs. Did you write the musical end of the album individually and then worked everything out in the rehearsal room? Who were some of the guitarists or bands that inspired the guitar direction of Bitter End?
(Griffin): I would say we mostly wrote these songs as a group, at least in terms of the finished product. Some of us would write some riffs in our spare time individually and bring them to everyone else. I had what felt like a vault of riffs that I had written or worked out on my own.
Jacob and I used to sit together and write together so we could hear how the rhythm guitar would lay under the lead. We found inspiration from a ton of different places so I’ll just speak for myself personally.
I would say my main influences at that time were James Hetfield (Metallica), Paul Kossoff (Free), Matt Henderson (Agnostic Front, Madball), Mike Dijan (Crown of Thornz, Breakdown), SOB (Merauder), Peter Steele (Type O Negative, Carnivore), Bobby Hambel (Biohazard), Andreas Kisser (Sepultura), Parris Mayhew (Cro-Mags), and Dr. Know (Bad Brains). If you listen to a lot of the riffs and composition on Climate of Fear, you can hear a mix of all of those in the guitar stylings. I’m proud of that.
(Jacob): It was a mix of both individually and as a group. I wrote the main portion of “Nothing Remains” in my room on a guitar that had only 4 strings (2 of them broke and it was a Floyd Rose and I didn’t know how to change it. I still don’t know how to change a Floyd Rose).
I brought the song into practice and I remember Daniel saying, “You hit the nail on the head.” That made me happy because some of my other attempts at songs had been rejected. I was heavily listening to Integrity's For Those Who Fear Tomorrow and Cro-Mags' Best Wishes and I wanted to combine those two sounds which inspired “Nothing Remains.” I thought what I created was good, but when Jason, Griff, and Ely started working on my song they turned into something even better.
The best example of a collaborative effort and all of our musical influences coming together is the song “Phantoms.” All of us contributed to that song. The very beginning is influenced by Alice in Chains, the verse riff is Cro-Mags, the chorus is Suicidal Tendencies, the bridge is Madball/Agnostic Front, the guitar solo is Biohazard, the breakdown is Judge and Strife, and the end guitar lead is Merauder.
(Griffin): My approach to writing this album was that I wanted to make it memorable in the sense that we could play 1,000 shows, sure, but an album can live forever. I think it showed a lot of our maturity at the time in terms of song writing in being able to slow it down where the natural tendency for younger bands was to play fast and in your face.
We knew we had a sick drummer that could find the pocket and groove things out, we knew we had a thick and biting guitar tone so my thought was to make things heavy without “faking” the listener out by just mashing it in their face. I was really big on making sure everything served the song so to speak, so it was important to me to create songs that went whatever direction they needed to go, even if that meant playing slower.
I also thought that by having different tempos infused into the record showed that we were more dynamic than other bands at the time.
An aspect of Bitter End that I have always loved—especially on Climate of Fear—is the way the band rides a groove/riff out. There’s a certain tempo the band flourishes so well in. “The Higher” is a great example of that. A lot of other hardcore bands would speed up that kind of groove but you let it rock at a mid-tempo pacing. Is that something that you thought/talked about a lot or did it come naturally?
(Ely): Funny you mention "The Higher.” I was just talking to Griff about this the other day, we were really inspired by a band called True Blue (Thank you, Kitzel). That song is just a driven riff, I wanted to have both a downbeat beat into the song yet followed by a mid-tempo type beat.
I was really musically inclined as far as drumming, coming from a marching band/drumline type style. So I knew how Griff and Jacob wanted the rhythm beats to be. If I was talking to you in person I’d explain more into detail, on how that song became about, hopefully one day I’d get the chance.
READ MORE: 2018 interview with Patrick Kitzel (True Blue, Reaper Records)
(Jacob): "The Higher" Iis one of my favorite Bitter End songs. "The Higher" came as a result ofbeing influenced by bands like The Icemen. They would ride out grooves and riffs for the entire length of the song. We were also listening to European hardcore bands during that time like True Blue, Icepick, and World Collapse which would do something similar.
It was also our goal to have songs in different keys other than solely the key of D, but still be “heavy.” Like many of the songs on Climate of Fear, "The Higher" was a collaborative effort, but if memory serves, Griff, our guitar player, came up with the majority of the riffs and song structure. It is a very disciplined song music wise, and the lyrics and vocal flow that Daniel came up with fit perfectly with the vibe of the song.
Everything just flowed perfectly from the production, to the bass and drum grooves to create one of my favorite Bitter End Tracks. I contributed to the end breakdown of “The Higher,” and if you listen to “Heavens” by the German hardcore band World Collapse, you will hear similarities.
You recorded the album with Craig Douglas in the producer/engineer role. Tell me about him and what made him the right person for the job. You recorded with him again after that, so it must have been a solid relationship.
(Daniel): I think I met Craig when he was playing for Will to Live, who are very important band in TXHC history. I actually filled in on vocals for Will to Live when I was like 19 or 20 years old, for a tour of the south. If you knew me and you knew Rob (Will to Live vocals) in that time period, me as a fill-n vocalist is wild.
I guess I did alright because no one ever complained. Either way, Craig maybe played bass on that tour. If he didn’t, I have bits of memories riding in the Will to Live van with him so I might have really gotten to know him riding somewhere with him in their van.
(Jacob): Recording is always a stressful, but exciting experience. I knew nothing about Craig Douglas when we recorded Climate of Fear, in fact, I knew next to nothing about recording in general,despite having recorded a 7” and some demos. CoF was the biggest musical endeavor we had partaken in at the time. And despite working hard on the songs and being creative musicians, everyone in Bitter End at the time was inexperienced with recording an actual full-length record.
It is a leap of faith to work on any type of musical project, and Craig Douglas helped guide us through making that record. The first day of recording, Craig had us sit down on a couch and watch a video of Dimebag Darrell (Pantera) talking about how imperfections on records make a record special. His enthusiasm, organization, and keen sense of detail elevated what we were hoping to achieve.
For the song “Panic,” he kicked everyone out of the control room so he could work on the sound clips. Jason, our bass player, had found a bunch of different news clips that he downloaded on WAV files. Craig was in the control room piecing all those sound clips together over the top of the "Panic" intro. He called us all back into the control room and turned the lights off and said something like “alright check this out.”
We sat there listening to what he put together; the anxiety, chaos, and tension of the news clips over the drums and bass which built up to the pause where the one news clip says, “there is panic on the streets” and then kicks into the heavy breakdown. That was his doing. We were all floored by what we had just heard.
As mentioned earlier, the album opens with the Emergency Alert System warning followed by a sound collage consisting of newscasters reporting all sorts of tragic events around the world. It reminds me of a song called “Suffer the Masses” by Flotsam & Jetsam that has a similar intro. “Panic” sets the ominous tone of Climate of Fear perfectly.
(Jason Wallace, bass): I had originally envisioned the opening to be a contrasting back and forth of awful world events and celebrity gossip bullshit, but considering the theme of the album, we thought the awful world events were enough to set the tone of the record. It’s meant to be a tv switching through stations and a glimpse into the defining news of the time. It sounds tame by today’s standards but at the time it was significant.
You have to remember, when we recorded that record, we were 5 years out of 9/11 and a year out from TMZ being a thing. It was a weird time. Our engineer, Craig Douglas, took that vision and spun some magic to really emphasize and elevate certain elements. We never really discussed it outright but we mind melded on to the same page and he was able to really craft the vibe we were going for.
Since then, Uvalde, Sandy Hook, Sutherland Springs, and El Paso as well as countless other terrible things have happened that could’ve established that tone. I listen to it today and think it almost sounds tame. The 19 children who were destroyed by bullets in Uvalde, Texas while police stood outside and listened make almost every other event on that intro seem tame in comparison.
The lines “hard to handle what is happening all around. drug pushers roam free, suicide continues, paranoia rising quickly to keep us all in line, look a little deeper, won't like what you find” appear on the album’s title track. Like other songs of Climate of Fear, there’s a ton of anxiety packed into the lyrics. Were you going through that yourself or were you acting more like a reporter of what you were seeing?
(Daniel): I wrote most of the lyrics on Climate of Fear when I was 21. I’m 38-years-old today. Of course there are certain lyrics that make me cringe, but generally I’m impressed with how a lot of lyrics written when I was 21 still hold up.
The lines you specially mentioned, I think I was being a reporter more than anything about the general situation of society. At that time in my life, I was actually having a little bit less anxiety than in years prior, but I was still feeling the reverberating affects of dealing with some intense anxiety in my late teens. Some of the lyrics to other songs on the album are more inward looking and are related to my personal anxieties or “fears."
Like the tempo aspect I brought up earlier, the arrangements on the album are really well composed. There’s nothing there that doesn’t need to be. Did Craig Douglas get involved with that during the recording or was it sorted out during pre-production?
(Jacob): Craig didn’t get involved with any of the pre-production, of course he had great ideas that we used when we actually recorded. For CoF we rented a storage shed that we used to practice in. We would write out the song structures in notebooks or on the wall of the practice space. A lot of thought went into the arrangements and song structure. Everything that was written was very intentional.
Not many hardcore bands during that time were following the verse/chorus format. We felt that set us apart.Being a part of the writing process for CoF was a time of “musical awakening” for me. Each member of Bitter End had a wider range of knowledge of different musical genres; hardcore, punk, grunge, metal, we listened to it all. The bands we loved and were influenced by all had well defined musical arrangements and song structures and we wanted to emulate that.
(Griffin): Yeah, the leads and solos were something I was looking forward to the most. Growing up, my guitar teacher was very tough on me. He made me learn everything on an acoustic and never allowed me to play electric even though that was the only thing I wanted to do. I would practice scales and other fundamentals in clean tones which absolutely forced me to be creative in other ways. Bending strings, finding resonance, and sustaining notes was the only way to add spice when playing acoustic.
A little known fact about 'Climate of Fear' is that a lot of the riffs/leads/songs were written on acoustic! Also, being from Texas meant that Pantera was a huge influence for almost every guitarist here so naturally I had to play with a Wah pedal. I mentioned Paul Kossoff earlier in the interview, Paul had a unique way of sounding huge despite Free’s music only being a 3-piece. I was inspired by his playing style and wanted to emulate how he played.
I also had a natural way of playing through pentatonic scales so there was also a bluesy element to my leads. Todd Jones (Terror, Nails) and I were having a lot of conversations online going into the writing process of CoF and he helped me focus on making sure there wasn’t anything “extra.”
Most of the framework of the solo’s were pre-written with a little bit of improvisation on the fly. We had a really cool thing happen in studio where the Wah pedal had a strange interaction with the tube amp, in which the wah started to act like a pitch shifter at times so it gave the effect that there were dive-bombs happening. You can really hear this on “The Other Side.”
Jason, your bass tone is bright and clear in the mix, something I wish more hardcore bands in Bitter End’s stylistic lane paid attention to. Was your bass tone already dialed in before the album or did it take some tweaking during the sessions? I also love the high note (maybe a harmonic?) hit in “Vigilance” so much!
(Jason): I joined Bitter End as a guitarist and learned to play bass by necessity along the way. One of my favorite bass players is Peter Hook from Joy Division/New Order and it’s because he uses his bass almost as a second or third guitar to supplement what the rest of the band is doing. So the goal was to be bright and clear in the high end and to be kinda nasty in the low end.
A lot of great bass players at the time were using SansAmp pedals to achieve this sound, but I opted for an MXR bass DI pedal to chase that tone and still vouch for it. I was fortunate to have some truly virtuoso musicians in my orbit, like Alex Hughes from Hatred Surge and Wade Allison (RIP, I miss you) from Iron Age, to bounce ideas off of.
The main goal for some of the more melodic stuff was to be a third guitar in the low end. Craig Douglas understood that and I think we hit that pretty well.
What are your favorite songs on Climate of Fear? Also, which songs does Bitter End absolutely have to play live or people will be pissed at you?
(Daniel): My favorites are the ones we still play live most of the time, which isn’t too often these days: "Climate of Fear," "Phantoms," and "Terrified Eyes." I also still think "Nothing Remains" holds up. We have not played that one in years.
Do you remember what the response to the album was like when it came out? Maybe you don’t really pay close attention that?
(Daniel): Again, it is all kind of a blur, but I know suddenly more people cared. We got opportunities to tour in Europe after Climate of Fear was released. We were offered more opportunities to play with great bands in the states as well. In Texas, we would also headline smaller shows.
I remember bands that I was a fan of before Bitter End existed started asking for our t shirts at shows. I’d always trade for theirs. In my early 20s mind, that was all the validation I needed. That said, we never really got to the point where the band made any money at all outside of making a van payment and sometimes the band fund could buy everyone Taco Bell. Of course, making money was never a realistic goal anyway. I’m not sure any of us really ever had any aspirations to attempt to be a full time touring band. I can say for sure I didn’t.
How much touring did you do in support of the album? Was there a city where the band did especially well outside of your region in Texas?
(Daniel): We were never really anywhere close to a full-time touring band, but any time there was a break in school, or in the summer, we were gone for a couple of weeks at a time. Often certain members could not do certain tours, and there were lots of fill ins for certain runs outside of Texas.
Texas was always the best but besides that, Southern California was second strongest for us once Climate of Fear came out. Europe in 2008 was memorable. Bitter End, Meltdown, and 50 Lions split between two sprinter vans. We played something like 28 shows in 30 days. The words "incredible" and "miserable" come to mind with that one (laughs).
The incredible part - being on the total other side of world, and people singing a long and excited to see us. I made friends who I still talk to from time to time to this day. We toured a lot of with Shipwreck, who we became great friends with. I remember lots of shows with the Mongoloids. One random vivid memory of that time period I have is hanging out in the Mongoloids mini school bus hearing the Trapped Under Ice demo for the first time. You could say it made an impression on me.
Technically still in support of Climate of Fear, we did a leg of Have Heart’s final tour in 2009 that went across Canada and down the West Coast. That was a great time. We actually had Blake Ibanez from Power Trip/Fugitive play bass for us on that tour if I remember correctly [ed. It was actually guitar]. It could have been guitar. Either way, that was his first time touring.
In a way, the smaller shows in the middle of nowhere Canada were just as memorable as the bigger ones. The amount of people who can talk about watching Have Heart play in Thunder Bay, Ontario is quite limited but all the bands had a good time hanging out. I could go on, but it seems like we pretty much played with and became friendly with most touring hardcore bands in that era. You name ‘em, I bet we played with them somewhere in the US or Europe.
Bitter End signed with Deathwish Inc. after Climate of Fear. Was that just a matter of wanting to step things up to a label with a higher profile and reach? I feel like Malfunction did a great job up to that point, but I would love to get your insight on that.
(Daniel): Technically, Deathwish Inc. just bought Malfunction Records and the label’s catalog. If memory serves me correctly, at first, Deathwish Inc. kept Malfunction going as a separate label for a short while, but eventually all the bands originally on Malfunction who were still recording ended up on Deathwish Inc. We certainly were not upset about it.
Tru and Linas with Malfunction were great but they knew they had their hands full. When Malfunction Records went to Deathwish Inc., Malfunction had Bitter End, Ceremony, Trash Talk, Internal Affairs, and Reign Supreme actively recording and playing shows.
Looking back at Climate of Fear, how do you feel about it as an album and where do you think it ranks in your discography?
(Daniel): Whenever I revisit, sometimes I can appreciate all the good aspects and kind of understand why in 2024 someone like yourself would be interested enough to ask questions about the record. Other times, I can be overly critical of certain aspects.
The album has some of the best Bitter End songs, that is for sure. Overall, I don’t think it is as strong as the next album Guilty as Charged, but I’m still proud of Climate of Fear.
If you had told 21-year-old me in the studio, that someone would email me in 2024 to ask about the album, I would not have believed you. It is pretty cool to have been a part of creating something that has made enough of an impact that people are still talking about it 17 years after the fact.
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Tagged: 2000s hardcore week, bitter end
