Born out of the gritty New York hardcore scene of the late ’80s, No Redeeming Social Value have spent decades turning packed rooms into full-blown parties. Known for their beer-soaked anthems and tongue-in-cheek take on hardcore culture, the Queens-based band remains a beloved fixture for fans who crave fun, energy, and unapologetic chaos.
I recently caught up with vocalist Dean Miller to talk about their history, their enduring DIY spirit, and why the good times still keep rolling.
Let’s take it back to the beginning: Speaking as someone who grew up there, Queens has always had a strong hardcore community. What are your earliest recollections of hardcore growing up there?
My earliest recollections would have to be the neighborhood bands. Around our way, we had Norman Bates & the Showerheads, The Six & Violence, and SFA who were in their very early stages. Aside from them, I didn’t know Hardcore music existed. I just knew these bands were really different from the metal bands, and West Coast punk bands I listened to. So, from that point forward, I knew there had to be another world of bands (NYHC) out there, and I was determined to find it, for better or worse, and I did find it.
I discovered the Astoria, Queens bands and I was psyched. I was also very proud when I got the Sick of It All demo tape and learned that they’re from Flushing, Queens. I really love being from Queens. I’ve never lived anywhere else.
How did the original NRSV lineup all know each other? Were you friends from school, or was it a classified listings sort of deal? I think the first time I saw the band play was at Our Lady of Lourdes, a place I know factors into the band's story.
The original lineup consisted of friends from the neighborhood that I coaxed into jamming with my kid brother, Kent. Once my friends realized that my 12-year-old brother could play better than most, they started jamming regularly.
As the band progressed, it’s mostly been people that we met along the way through various means - school, shows, friend of a friend, classifieds, it varies as we’ve had several line ups. The main thing is we’ve all remained friends. Which was really the point from the beginning. That’s the best part, the music is really secondary. We are a family.
We built our chops at the Our Lady of Lourdes shows early on. We were so fortunate to have that youth center in our ‘hood hosting shows that teenagers could participate in. We played there lots of times during the demo days. We even hosted our own gigs there a few times. It’s funny to us how many people, like yourself, remember us from playing that spot. We weren’t very good back then, but we had the right idea/ attitude. Without that place there’s no way we woulda gotten outta the basement/ rehearsal stages.
Staying on the Queens tip, the only other band I remember from back then from the NYHC scene that injected humor, beer, and party culture into hardcore was Murphy's Law. How much pushback did you get from the purists? The funny thing is I remember straight edge kids not giving a shit about it.
NRSV is known to many people as the "joke band." We think people intend to insult us by regarding us like that. We’ve become accustomed to not being taken "seriously" due to our themes and unconventional approach. It’s really a motivational factor for us. We’ve caused many a naysayer to eat those words after witnessing our live presentation.
Jokingly, we refer to ourselves as the "ghetto Murphy’s Law," "the drunken Agnostic Front," and "the punk rock Sick of It All." So we know our lane and we have fun with it. We’ve always struck a positive chord with lots hardcore purists and straight edgers alike. I think you’d have to be either brain dead, or a Puritan to not get our lighthearted humor and scarcasm. Yet, some people either continue to be insulted, and/or feel compelled to defame us. But we really enjoy that too, so jokes’ on them.
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In the early '90s, NRSV released a couple of EPs: Negative Image (1993) and Hardcore Your Lousy Ass Off! (1994). How much were you playing out at that point? What were the other bands NRSV felt a close kinship with at that time, locally or otherwise?
Those two records really put a lot of steam in our engine. Up until then, only the "bigger" bands had an actual record. Most local bands had cassette demo tapes. We’ve always tried to knock the skill level in that way. Our first two efforts are really primative records, but they served us well, and got us noticed.
We used the momentum to play as much as possible - we played every opportunity offered to us. At first, mostly in bars with metal bands, or high school shows. We were the only hardcore/ punk band at these gigs, so we really stood out. We used Maximumrocknroll's Book your Own Fucking Life to get some out of town gigs.
After getting our records in the stores, DIY style, of course, we started getting calls from other hardcore bands. Raybeez/ Warzone, Ryan (Home 33, Bushmon, Ache), and Johnny Stiff (WNYU/ Crucial Chaos radio show) were the first to give us a shot on the NYHC scene.
It snowballed pretty quickly from there.
Once NRSV was "on the scene," we rolled to gigs and pal’ed around with Rejuvenate, Bushmon, Breakdown, Coldfront, Neglect, Billy Club Sandwich, etc….and especially Warzone who we shared members with.
You hooked up with Kevin Gill and Striving for Togetherness Records for the Rocks the Party album. What are some memories that stand out to you about making that album?
Originally, our debut full length was to be released as a split album with Brooklyn’s Indecision on a Philly-based label. Kevin Gill (SFT Rec.), who would become our label boss, bandmate, promoter, and close friend lured us away from that first deal. The band decided to go all in on the "our success/ our failure" idea. We needed to definitively know if people wanted NRSV.
We spent one really fun weekend in a motel in rural New Jersey writing songs and recording at a local studio. We were exploding with creative ideas, and really let our collective personality come through with the album.
NRSV Rocks the Party along with our 7-inch single, Skinheads Rule, put us on the NYHC map. A whole new world of possibilities was opening to us at a young time in our lives and we were drinking every last drop of it….too much, perhaps.
Lyrically, your songs bounce from absurd to poignant. Do you see what you do as a form of social commentary disguised as beer-soaked chaos?
Your insights and flattery are appreciated. I’d be lying if I said most of what we write, or do is ever planned or doted upon for too much time. Our personalities are such that we are very much spontaneous and then followed by a good heaping of full-on balls to the walls without a second thought.
In the context of writing our material, this works for and against us. Some songs are direct hits, others are ill-conceived misses. As you mentioned, the subject matter does vary greatly, likely because everyone has a hand in writing songs.
Sometimes it’s just an idea/ thought, desire to express a particular sentiment, other times it’s an inside joke born of good natured ball-busting. Either way, we just try to go with what we know.
Example, “More Tattoos” was born of us ripping on Vinnie after he got his first ‘Tat. Or, ‘Chicken’ came about because we ate fried chicken wings before, and after every rehearsal in those days. Deep stuff.
When did NRSV start touring in Europe? It seems like the band built a loyal following over there.
Our first Euro-tour was in early ‘97, not too long after Rocks the Party was released. We’ve played there countless times since then. So many amazing memories - from the big venues, to the small clubs, to the festivals.
Some standouts would be Mike D. quitting the band/ tour early on, headlining the Akkerpop festival, playing at a wedding, or a few breweries, being showered with tons of confetti in Germany, sleeping in squats with stray dogs, being crowned “International Hardcore Drinking contest world champions”, the memories are endless, the stories are legendary.
Some of the best times are when we’d play a non-hardcore gig in a remote place, and the whole city would show up - young, and old. It’s always the most fun when people that have never heard of NRSV are having a great time and going off.
Our second home is a city called Maastricht, Netherlands. We’ve so many friends and family there. They’ve adopted NRSV as their own, and we’re so proud of that.
For a bunch of freaks from Queens getting to play around the world, the awesomeness of it is not lost on us.
For the THC album, you signed with Triple Crown Records, a label that had a decent run throughout the late '90s, early '00s. How did that deal come together, and was it a positive experience overall?
Triple Crown was poppin off as a record company around that era, and we were very lucky to be noticed by them. Of course, NRSV was the oddball band on their roster, but that was quite clear going into the deal.
The songs on that record are eclectic, and diverse. We had our own studio on 27th Street in Manhattan and would rehearse/ jam for days at a time. Not gonna lie, we were high as hell writing and recording those songs, it’s noticeable, but was fun as hell.
Triple Crown didn’t quite know what to make of us, but did really stick by us and help us. We toured a lot during this time - U.S., Canada, Europe, constantly. The 12inch vinyl included an NRSV comic book that we wrote and developed ourselves. We were determined to keep pushing the creative envelope, even if it got weird. Listening back to that album, it definitely got weird.
NRSV kept releasing music steadily throughout the decade, but how tough was it juggling the band with career and family commitments throughout the 2000s?
Oh man, it was tough to keep it together. As much as it was our habit to play in a band, and it largely defined our existence(s) for a good part of our lives, there were so many obstacles. I mean, we’re just your average dummies - we work jobs, have families, stuggle to pay the bills, and keep our sanity.
But through it all, we remained loyal to each other and we are all close friends. We really are a family. So it’s always been the same, we support and help each other and realize that we’ll never be a softball team, or a bowling league, or play Mahjong once a week. We get wasted and rage out to hardcore tunes. That’s just what we are made of, so we were able to carry on by remaining true to ourselves. We are blessed to have found each other in this life.
One of our proudest accomplishments during this period of time was writing, directing, producing our own DVD, which was one of the first released by a hardcore band. It was a DIY project and we really had fun and enjoyed the process. And then of course there’s our comeback album, Still Drinking.
It was Vinnie’s idea to make that the title of the album.
Talk to me a bit about Vinnie Value and the impact he had on you on a personal level. I was already living in Los Angeles when he passed away, but I remember the news traveling fast throughout the hardcore community. It speaks to how beloved he was in our scene.
His impact on me, on the band, on each of us individually, is something that we will never be able to quantify. Losing him took a lot of wind out of our sails, and forced us to consider if we even wanted to continue. Though he was not in the band for longer than he did play with us, we always stayed close, again, we’re family.
He was truly a kind and talented person. It was a huge loss to our hardcore community.
I was always so proud of Vinnie and the way he was from our small world, but was recognized by so many for his talent and big personality. Vin always did what he originally set out to do from the day I met him. He joined Warzone, Grey Area, The Arsons, Kill Your Idols. He made them his bands, and guided them with his vision.
Everyone who met Vin knew he was special. We were lucky to have him on our Wasted for Life album. That was Vin’s last recording. Best thing is we always told each other “I love you," everytime we met or parted. I’ll always have that with me.
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The most recent NRSV album is 2020's Wasted for Life, which is your best-sounding release, and also the most consistent in terms of the material. How do you feel about it now that you're half-a-decade removed from making it?
Best sounding and most consistent was exactly what we were striving to achieve with Wasted for Life, so thank you for that compliment.
As a group we never actively considered/ planned on making a new album. Listening to the later Ramones albums a lot back then, (Brain Drain, Mondo Bizarro, Adios Amigos) I was awed by the strength of the songwriting that late into their career.
Kent and I wanted to see if we could craft some new, better, more evolved NRSV songs in that spirit. Plus we really didn’t wanna keep playing gigs if we had nothing new to offer. So we set about the sometimes epic adventure that would become WFL.
We wrote, re-wrote, demo’ed, re-demo’ed, and re-re-recorded many of those songs a bunch of times over a few trying and personally difficult years, without a timeline for completion. The goal was not the finish line, ie. ‘’making a record." It was more of a “let’s keep busy and try some different stuff to see what would happen” type thing.
We took our time with each part and we all contributed to the songs. We found that even the smallest ingredient made big differences sometimes. Thus, we all really learned and grew a lot through making WFL.
Our drummer, Glen, recorded, and mixed it at his studios. He is a master sound engineer with a great ear and did an exemplary job, giving us our best, most modern sound ever. Franko (bass) helped write some great songs. It’s the first NRSV album with him as a writer.
Completely contrary to our usual modus operendi, we really concentrated and honed each song to a fine edge. Pretty much everything on WFL is intentional. Magically, the most unplanned part was when Vinnie came down to hear the mixes and insisted on adding a vocal part to the closing track, "NYC NRSV." His idea never occurred to us until he suggested trying it himself.
It’s his last recording, and we are so grateful to have shared such a tremendously special, and unforgettable moment with him.
We released it ourselves, featuring versions on beer-colored vinyl and awesome full color picture disc with Dead City Records during the pandemic. Probably not the wisest move, but eh…it’s consistent with our reckless spontaneity. It was a journey that brought us even closer together as a group. Once again, couldn’t have planned that part any better.
It is without a doubt the record we are proudest of. WFL defines our band and represents the best of what we’ve evolved into after all these wasted years.
What's the status of the band these days outside of playing shows? Do you have any plans to make another record? Who is in the lineup these days?
Our official status is pretty much the same as it’s always been: “down for whatever." We’re happy to get together and rehearse, have some beers, bust some balls. Or, sometimes we skip the rehearsal and just drink and bust balls.
We’ve had the same fellas for years now - Kent, Franko, Glen, myself, sometimes Mike will jump in, sometimes Scott (Nicko Tene) will jump in.
We just figure, NRSV is sort of it’s own thing, and we watch it go. We’re fortunate in that regard. People ask us to play, and we’ll play, or not…it’s pretty casual. As long as we maintain the philosophy of “Have a good time all the time," the band is bound to find it’s way.
We’ve no solid plans, we don’t owe anyone anything, and that suits us fine for now. Its how we started out, no reason to change the formula at this point. Just chillin’ really.
Excluding the Ramones, what is the best band to ever come out of Queens?
Run-D.M.C. They changed everything. They are the coolest. I can’t imagine a world without them.
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