Not only is Justin Brannan New York City Councilmember for the 43rd district in Brooklyn, he's also an esteemed member of the NYHC community. I wonder which of those two entities is more opinionated? But I digress!
We're here to celebrate Justin's achievements with Most Precious Blood, the metallic hardcore band he co-founded in the early '00s. His guitar and songwriting work can be heard on the group's four studio albums, released from 2001-2011. Before that, he was a member of Indecision, a '90s hardcore outfit I had the pleasure of playing alongside with when I was in Black Army Jacket.
Even though he's busy with much more important work, Justin still found time to chat with me about his take on the Most Precious Blood story. Vote or die.
When I interviewed Rachel Rosen back in 2017, she explained that when Most Precious Blood was formulating, the intent was to start a new band for fun and not worry about touring and all that kind of stuff. Did you feel that Indecision got away from you guys? What I mean is, did the pressure of being on a label and going out on the road get tiring?
We never cared what the labels wanted us to do so the pressure was always our own. Our work ethic became a runaway train. We drove ourselves into the ground. Nobody wanted to be the one to speak up and say, “um hey guys, maybe we wouldn’t all be so burnt out if we weren’t touring 9 months a year and living out of a van." Diffusion of responsibility, I guess.
We were all thinking it but nobody was saying it. So we just kept going and it just fell apart like a space shuttle breaking up during re-entry except the space shuttle was a shitty rental van in an El Paso parking lot. After the grueling touring life of Indecision, it was fun to just be playing for fun again with Most Precious Blood without any expectations.
When MPB started, we all made a conscious decision not to become a touring machine and just do it for fun and play weekend shows. That didn’t last long but it was fun while it did.
What do you remember about the early talk about MPB in terms of the sound/style you wanted to explore? Or did that all just happen once you started playing together in a room together again?
We knew no matter what we did it would sound like us but I think subconsciously we were going for Undertow meets Hot Water Music meets At the Gates, if that even makes sense. Tom and I always had an appreciation for writing simple, anthemic stuff but with some kind of melody.
The MPB 2000 demo was recorded at Fastlane Studios! I don't most people outside of NYC know how much of an impact that place had on heavy music in that era.
When we were kids, Fastlane was legit hallowed ground because that was where Biohazard, Life of Agony, Type-O Negative, and Merauder all rehearsed.
Indecision recorded our very first 7'' at Fastlane back in 1993 and since MPB was really about getting back to the basics of having fun playing music together, it just made sense to go back to the place where it all started. But it wasn’t a deliberate decision, it was just what we knew. You're starting a new hardcore band in Brooklyn? You go rehearse at Fastlane.
How did you guys end up working with Trustkill Records? Did Josh Grabelle contact you as soon as the band started, or did the deal offer come in once the demo was out?
Yeah, MPB had offers right away but we were very stubborn. We really wanted to start from scratch. We wanted to put out a demo on cassette and do all the shit you’re supposed to do when you start a new band. I think we wanted to handicap ourselves because we could. Those rites of passage meant so much to us in the early days so it was exciting to do it all again.
We didn’t wanna just be the "new Indecision band" that gets a record deal before even writing a single riff. It was probably some weird subconscious guilt but I think we wanted to struggle like any other new band would. I think Josh from Trustkill understood and respected that and when we were ready, he was there waiting.
The Nothing In Vain recording sessions were produced by Ron Thal, who most people will know as “Bumblefoot” from his time in Guns N’ Roses. I first heard about him through a guitarist I knew named Steve Mironovich who played in an ’80s metal band called Cities.
Ron was the engineer for the first Indecision record. He did the second one, too. Our friend’s brother had this little basement studio on Bay 7th Street in Brooklyn and Ron was the in-house engineer.
We just became really good friends with Ron and always went back to work with him whenever it made sense. Probably another subconscious part of going back to the start for us. Indecision did our first record with Ron and so MPB did the same. It was comfortable, muscle memory lane vibes.
What are your favorite moments about that first album? Do you ever listen to the album today?
Some of my favorite songs are on Nothing In Vain. The recording is a total cacophony – always reminds me of We’re Not In This Alone. We mixed that record in Ron’s living room in New Jersey but we recorded it inside this old creaky haunted building in Sailors' Snug Harbor, Staten Island. That was cool.
Tom Sheehan quit the band after Nothing In Vain came out. Rachel said that the split wasn’t a pretty one. What do you remember about that situation?
Somewhere along the way we found ourselves in a booth at Chin Chin Palace on Staten Island eating vegan Chinese food when we decided MPB was gonna do exactly what we said we would never do: quit our jobs and become a full-time touring band. Again.
The memory lane shit didn’t last very long before we got antsy I guess since we were getting all these offers to do tours. I also think this was right around the time when hardcore was exploding again. Indecision imploded in 2000 when shit was kinda dead.
MPB was sort of coming of age at a time when bands were making a living touring again so I assume that played a role in our thinking. I honestly don’t remember how it all went down with Tom leaving MPB but it was weird and awkward and painful and ugly and probably could have been handled more amicably since, in the end, no one really denied that it was for the best.
How did Rob Fusco end up becoming the singer in MPB? Did you guys jam with anyone else before he was locked in?
Memory is hazy here and I don’t remember the timeline but I can’t imagine we split with Tom without some sort of contingency plan. I think some of our Syracuse friends mentioned that Rob was looking for a new project and we knew him from One King Down and knew he was OK with being a road dog so we reached out to him.
I think we had a big tour in the works – I don’t remember which one – so we didn’t have much time. I remember driving through a very bad snowstorm to go jam with Rob. We played a few Gorilla Biscuits songs and we were like OK this will work and we left for some tour a few days later. That was that.
READ MORE: Brooklyn Hardcore in the ‘90s: Hardcore Punk Without the Punk
On your first album with Rob on vocals, Our Lady of Annihilation, you worked with Dean Baltulonis, an engineer/producer from the hardcore scene. Lou Koller from Sick of It All also guested on the album. What are some memories that stick out to you about making that one? Was it a much different vibe than the previous album’s recording sessions?
I think maybe the Hope Conspiracy guys introduced us to Dean. He was great and MPB wound up doing all of our albums with him from that point on. Our Lady was recorded during a really hot summer in 2003. New York City had a big blackout that August and I remember being afraid we would somehow lose everything we recorded but thankfully that didn’t happen.
Rachel and I had become very close with the Sick of It All guys around that time so we asked Lou to come sing on that song. I remember we were a bit apprehensive about Rob’s vocals because we didn’t demo anything or do any pre-production so some of the stuff we heard for the first time literally as Rob laid it down in the studio. But it turned out great.
I don’t remember much else. Dean’s studio back then was in DUMBO and it still blows my mind how far DUMBO has come in 20 years. It’s unrecognizable from those early days when it was just howling wolves, vacant lots and Peas & Pickles.
You had Trustkill, Matt Pike booking you, Roadrunner Records in Japan and certain European territories, and most of all, a great record to support. How did that campaign go for the band? Do you feel that the band made the right moves in terms of the touring and support slots you took in that period?
I honestly don’t remember but I know we toured a lot and went to a bunch of places we’d never been before: Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, South Africa, and a few other places I know I’m forgetting. We always wanted to go where other bands weren’t going. That’s always been our thing. We would specifically ask the booking agents to send us where other bands didn’t wanna go. Sometimes it was awesome. Sometimes we got strip-searched.
2005 saw the release of the Merciless album. Since you were three albums in by that point, how would you say MPB’s sound/approach progressed/changed through the years?
We were just having fun. Some more experimental stuff with samples and programming. The idea for the "Shark Ethic" intro came to me while listening to “Sinister Rouge” by Bad Religion but I found the perfect choral sample from Sisters of Mercy “This Corrosion.” Two of my all-time favorite bands.
Rachel and I were really into Muse at this time before they got big so there was some of that in there too. Merciless was a fun record. I like it a lot and probably listen to it the most out of all the other MPB records. We were very happy with how it came out. "Damage Control Freak" is my favorite song on that album. I had that riff in my head for years.
Share some memories from the “Shark Ethic” music video. If I remember correctly, that video got some airplay on Fuse and MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball?
That was so much fun. J. Jesses Smith directed it. I don’t remember how we hooked up but he had done a bunch of really big rap videos for 50 Cent, Wu Tang, and a bunch of others. That was a very fun project.
This was a rare moment when MTV was making a comeback and actually playing music videos again. This was 20 years ago and people were still watching TV. We weren’t fully living online just yet. Lou from Sick of It All does a cameo as one of the radio station's security guards in that video.
Rachel said that the band got burned out from touring the Merciless album. Do you think you spent too much time on the road? How did your lives suffer back at home in terms of your careers and family?
I can distinctly remember complaining about how long the flight was to Australia. That’s how I knew I was done with touring in bands full time after a decade or so. Here I was going to Australia for like the third time with my best friends to play music and all my expenses were being paid and still I was complaining about it.
We were just burnt out. Again. It was time to move on or at least tour a lot less. So that’s what we did. I think we learned from our mistakes with Indecision where we just flew the plane into the ground instead of saying hey maybe we should chill out for a bit.
Five years after Merciless, the band reconvened and made the Do Not Resuscitate album. When you went in to record it, did you already know that you wouldn’t be functioning as a working band in terms of touring and all that stuff? If so, did that makes things more loose/fun in the studio?
We tracked Dean down to a new studio he was working at. I don’t remember much about this recording. I think Rachel and I played almost everything on it except for the drums. Rob recorded his vocals somewhere else and sent them over. I’m not sure we were all ever in the same room during the whole process.
It was weird. Everyone was living someplace else. I never left NYC but I think by then everyone else had. We wrote most of the record at our rehearsal space on Wave Street in Staten Island. I remember that more than I remember the recording process.
It was fun to be able to write and record an album without immediately having to embark on another 8 months of touring ourselves to death. I’d always wanted to name a record Do Not Resuscitate and this felt like the perfect time for obvious reasons.
What do you think about that album today? What’s your favorite song on that one?
The main riff from "Animal Mother" was the first thing I wrote for this album in my apartment on 62nd Street in Brooklyn and I feel like years passed between me writing that riff and this album actually coming together.
There’s a bunch of riffs and parts on this that I like a lot. Kinda feels like a B-sides record but still cohesive. Padre Nuestro and the bullfighter trumpets at the beginning of the record were great. Like we were reading ourselves our last rites and I guess we kinda were.
In the years since then, MPB have played shows together, even with Tom on vocals. Has there ever been any talk about making a new record together again? Do you miss playing?
I still love playing shows. I’m just more sore the day after than I was when I was a kid. Indecision has written some riffs and we’ve snuck a new song into our sets here and there once or twice.
I think writing or releasing new songs is a bit subconsciously paralyzing for us because it’s been 24 years or something since we released any music so you start to feel like Billy Joel when he puts out the greatest hits album with the brand new song at the end and no matter good that new song is, it will suck when compared to all the classics that people have listened to for so long.
My riff ADHD is bad and our bar is pretty high. We’ve easily thrown away more riffs and songs than other bands have released. But I’m like 99% sure Indecision will release new music at some point. I’ve known those guys longer than just about anyone in my life. We’re family and we always have fun hanging out and jamming.
How would you describe the differences between Indecision and Most Precious Blood? Do you look back at them in the same kind of light?
Basically, like the Descendents and ALL.
What’s your favorite hardcore record from the 2000s?
Fuck, I have no idea. Lately I've just been listening to Bauhaus.
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Tagged: 2000s hardcore week, indecision, most precious blood
