Interview by Paul Salfen
This new track “The Summer of Hate” is about their homebase of Portland. Courtney Taylor-Taylor said of the song, “The summer of 2020 was hell in Portland, Oregon with the riots and destruction of the downtown area.” He hated how all these political extremists came to town and infiltrated his beloved city.
Says Courtney about the bizarrely gorgeous A.I.-generated video: “[A.I.] kept steering us into this macabre and sexually charged world… or cave actually. Quite flattering, as it was interpreting what the legacy of the band is. You have to stay pretty much hands-off once you give it prompts until editing as AI has quite a legit ego. If you try to force an issue, it will rebel by putting f**ked up things into the project. Much like a very childish human.”
Aside from the A.I.-embracing video, the song “The Summer of Hate” marks a darker and more rhythmic turn for the Portland, OR-based band. It’s a bit more goth, if you will… but it also finds its heart in the Motor City, Detroit.
Says Courtney: “Musically, ‘The Summer of Hate’ became our homage to the sounds of The Damned, The MC5, and probably a bit of the Stooges in there as well. The record was the manifestation of our desire to hear a record of heavy raw punk and metal guitar riffs handled in a way that we felt was cooler than the standard knuckle draggin’ man-rock that still tends to dominate a lot of popular culture in America.”
