Drugs of Faith
- Story by Anthony Bartkewicz
Richmond grindcore trio sends hearts aflutter via bassists and blast beats
“I think everyone in metal had a crush on Jo Bench at some point,” says Richard (just Richard), guitarist and vocalist for Drugs of Faith. “I hope I don’t sound like too much of a geek talking about this.” Decibel will talk about Bolt Thrower to anyone at any time, but it’s actually relevant when talking to Drugs of Faith. Richard and bassist Taryn pass the phone back and forth in their Virginia home, and Bolt Thrower are “the only other grindcore couple I can think of,” he says. “But I think they broke up a while back. Oh man, that’s pretty geeky right there: ‘Oh, Gaz and Jo broke up in 19-whatever.’”
Richard, formerly in Enemy Soil and occasional vocalist in Agoraphobic Nosebleed, has been immersed in grindcore for years. Taryn, on the other hand, grew up in Omaha. “[Grind] wasn’t a big thing there. I’d heard hardcore, but not good hardcore,” she remembers. “At the time, I was more into metal.” She had been dating Richard when DOF were bassless for a show with Melt-Banana and drafted her to fill in. “I played guitar. I’d never really played bass, and I didn’t know much about grindcore either. But I really liked where we were going with the band, because it’s not just like, ‘Play the song in 30 seconds.’ There’s more elements than just grindcore, and there’s definitely a different attitude.”
Like Brutal Truth, Drugs of Faith’s attitude towards grind is that you can always jam some punk, sludge or full-bore noise rock into it if you want to. “I think before, Richard wrote a lot by himself, and now we write together,” Taryn says. Drummer Shane contributed riffs and structures to their half of an upcoming split with Poland’s Antigama for Selfmadegod, on which Richard claims, “I tried even more to do something consciously atypical for grindcore. Shane’s not coming up with grindcore drumbeats, even though Scum is one of his favorite records… along with 1984 by Van Halen.”
Surely no one who’s acquainted with Agoraphobic Nosebleed would expect one of its throats to worry that his lyrics sound “kinda emo” on paper. Richard swears that’s not his intention. “A lot of the lyrics are about relationships, but not pointing a finger at someone; it’s talking about what’s happening with me,” he explains. “Like ‘The False War.’ That was a specific thing that happened with a friend of mine who I was in a band with. Maybe that’s not apparent when you’re reading it, because there are people who take that as a political song, but it’s not. We’ve all got our opinions, but my politics don’t agree on every point with Shane’s politics. I don’t get my information from the same places he gets his, but we still talk about it.”
A voice pipes up in the background. “Taryn just said ‘What about me?’” Richard relays. “Taryn and I agree a lot more.”
