LIFES
It’s certainly not easy listening, but Treading Water—the debut LP from Milwaukee-based hardcore combo LIFES—is one of the best records to come out of the city’s diverse music scene this year. The album is particularly satisfying for those who have followed the long musical careers of band members Zak Holochwost (drums-vocals) and Dave Rudnik (bass-vocals), punk-rock lifers who played in such seminal acts as Seven Days of Samsara, Get Rad, Kung Fu Rick, and Conquest for Death. Hardcore is usually a young person’s game, but forty-somethings Holochwost and Rudnik have managed to create something that sounds fresh while simultaneously feeding off their decades of experience playing heavy, intense music.
One of the most appealing aspects of Treading Water is the fact that it wastes no time in establishing its relentless tone. As veteran musicians, LIFES knows what works and use that knowledge to craft a confident, streamlined sound that doesn’t need a whole lot of bells and whistles to be effective. This approach has come with age, particularly as both Holochwost and Rudnik are now fathers.
“We certainly have less time now,” says Holochwost with a laugh, “Which then influences how we practice and write. I feel like there’s not a lot of pressure with the band, as family comes first. So, we go in spurts of writing. That’s just, logistically speaking, how we have to write.” Every parent knows that time is perhaps the most valuable commodity, and LIFES doesn’t waste a second on Treading Water. Illustrative of this approach to songwriting is evident on album standout “Facts of Lifes,” which needs only 90 seconds to sonically overwhelm the listener.
Yet “Facts of Lifes” is also noteworthy for another reason: it is one of multiple songs on Treading Water that discusses the loss of childhood innocence. “There’s definitely songs about kids on the record,” notes Rudnik, who pens the lyrics of “Facts of Lifes” as almost a guide to explaining the hard realities of death to his children. “Well I wish I had an answer, but life’s just a mystery,” Rudnik screams, “and everyone that claims to have one is promoting a fallacy/Well, the lesson I teach is that all of us each only have one chance.”
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Traditionally, hardcore has celebrated violence and used imagery associated with death to cultivate a certain image for the genre. In a remarkably refreshing way, LIFES have used the chaos associated with hardcore to draw attention to the confusion that often goes hand-in-hand with death and dying.
Album closer “It’ll Probably Get Better One Day” also touches on these topics of death of violence, with Rudnik writing “If I had grown up in a house of guns, I might have gone Columbine on someone/But instead, I just wanted to die.” Here, Rudnik is reliving the trauma of his youth with a candor not usually heard in the hardcore scene.
“I’ve been fucking tormented by sixth grade my entire life,” he explains. “It’s disturbing how often I can look back on that specific year of my life and how much I hated it.” For Rudnik, this pain is made even more acute as he considers the possibility of his own children having to live through such suffering. Yet Rudnik did not ultimately hurt anybody; instead, as he writes, “I kept on skating and I started writing songs.” That’s advice that more kids need to hear.
LIFES perform at Company Brewing opening for Jerome’s Dream on Saturday, Aug. 3, at 10 p.m.
