Photo Courtesy of Dave Rudnik
The structure of most bands is a volatile mixture. The smallest changes can cause combustion and then total annihilation. Seven Days of Samsara have defied those odds and are celebrating their 20th anniversary as a band by breaking up.
The origin story is an old classic, born of teenage boredom. Guitarists Jeff Meilander and Dave Penn and drummer Matt Ungerman had already been playing shows together, just in separate bands. The group bonded over pizzas and N64 and then hit the basement. Meilander described these initial songs as, “Sunny Day Real Estate meets Snapcase.” Shortly thereafter, Ungerman ran into Dave Rudnik while both were attending Marquette University. Knowing Rudnik from his days in the ska-grind hybrid Luke Skawalker, Ungerman knew they had found their bass player. As soon as the band started playing shows, Penn quit to attend school in Minnesota. He was replaced by Meilander’s ex-bandmate, Andy Silverman, solidifying the classic Seven Days of Samsara lineup.
With a stable lineup in place, the band established a sound rooted in the fast, heavy, moshable sounds of ’90s hardcore and added the melodic guitar lines of the popular emo bands of the day. “The way that any one of us envisioned a song turning out came out totally different when we finalized it together,” Meilander said. “I think that is what made Seven Days of Samsara so special.” The sound is very “of its time,” while also aging more gracefully than a lot of similar bands. With the focus more on the hardcore side of the sound, the band avoided the overwrought emo faux pas of the day.
The band were most active between 1999 and 2002. According to Rudnik, during that time, they were “touring two-to-three months out of the year and playing 10-12 shows a month when we weren’t on the road.” During this short span, Seven Days of Samsara released two full lengths, a handful of singles, toured the U.S. multiple times and spent a month in Europe. Pushing that hard for years on end can take its toll on a band.
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“I think it just came down to growing apart in what we wanted in bands and maybe even life in general,” Meilander said. Adding to the growing pains of young men becoming adults was the fact that, at the beginning of their final U.S. tour, Rudnik disclosed that he may be moving to Portland, Ore. “After that, things were different. We sold that van and never bought a new one,” Rudnik said. “We went to Europe the following summer and still played some shows around the Midwest, but it wasn’t the same.”
Even with the band’s bond shaken, they managed to keep moving through the curve balls life threw their way. In the process, they’ve built quite the well of highlights, including meeting Neil Young at the airport in Germany, playing in an abandoned pool in Slovenia and betting all their Canadian money at a casino instead of converting it into dollars. “The true highlights are the friendships we made with people all over the country and world and the bond that we formed among ourselves,” Rudnik said.
“I continued to tour heavily in other bands,” Meilander added. “When I look back, there was something about being young and totally in love with what Seven Days of Samsara did that was never quite the same for me in any other band.”
With the members preparing to lay the band to rest, Rudnik summed up his take-away from the two decades of Seven Days of Samsara. “It is insanely important to me and I wouldn’t be who I am without the experiences of that band, but I get that it is time,” said Rudnik. “Twenty years is a nice round number, and timing works out that we could end it with friends that we met on our first tour, so fuck it.”
Seven Days of Samsara’s farewell show is at Club Timbuktu, 520 E. Center St., with Majority Rule, Paige Marshall, Plague Walker and Snag on Saturday, March 31 at 6 p.m. The band is also releasing a double LP compiling all of their recordings. It’s streaming on Bandcamp.
