New Term

It would appear that Walter Schreifels, who is spending some family time in Brooklyn after having spent the European festival season in his other home, Berlin, has had an incredibly prolific 2012. In addition to powering ahead on a new record from Rival Schools – the hardcore-come-indie group he formed in 1999 – he's been working on solo material, touring Europe and the US with legendary '80s hardcore group Gorilla Biscuits. To top it all off, he barely gets through a sentence explaining how busy he's been before he has to put down the phone and tend to the demands of his young daughter.

“Okay, I'm back!” the 43-year-old confirms with a youthful enthusiasm. “It's been a crazy but a very fun year so far. It has been amazing.

“I'm kind of just recovering from a week of excitement,” he says of those four shows played just last month with Quicksand, a post-hardcore band he formed in New York City in 1990 that went on to have two major label releases but never really cracked the mainstream. They nonetheless garnered a significant underground following, and it appears the call for reunion shows were totally justified. Will it lead to new material?

“We talk about it and we just kind of play it by ear. We just said we did this one Revelation Records thing and there was so much excitement about that, and then we thought, 'Oh shit, we gotta play New York,' and that kind of led to an offer to play a festival, and then an offer to be on TV, and then it all of a sudden became a bigger thing. We're not even doing press or anything so I don't want to get into it too much, but safe to say that it was really fun to play with those guys – such awesome musicians, such cool people, and the songs just really held up for me.”

With that statement in the bag it's time to move on from the past and into the now – Rival Schools. A band with a spotted history and five years of inactivity between 2003 and 2008, it didn't stop the name from becoming a revered icon in the underground worlds where punk, hardcore and indie rock meet. Last year saw the release of the band's second official full-length effort, Pedals, which showed a markedly huge progression from their 2001 debut, United By Fate. Perhaps armed with a desire to make up for lost time, 2012 has seen Schreifels quite focused on the band's next album.

“We've been working on the game plan, and playing this Australian tour really factors in in a big way. We're trying to get some new songs together to build a little, to develop them a little on tour, which is really a great way to do it. Just kind of getting the program together. Pedals came out a year-and-a-half ago or something like that, and yeah, it's time. We're coming up with some really great stuff and it can just go any which way, which is a nice feeling.”

Although the band hasn't played much at all in the way of shows this year, they've certainly been busy behind the scenes and have done pre-production recording of half-a-dozen new tunes. In fact, they've been handed a new way of approaching music – more specifically, as a three-piece. In September last year, guitarist Ian Love left the band for a second time, leaving Schreifels, bassist Cache Tolman and drummer Sam Siegler to stitch it up.

“We've been kind of getting to the roots of it I guess – the core elements of what it is within the limits of a three-piece,” Schreifels explains. “My guitar-playing is definitely developing a lot. Everyone just has more space. I wouldn't change what the band was in the past – it was great – but I'm definitely excited about the changes that are coming up. Just actually listening to some of the stuff that we've demoed so far, I'm really excited by the possibilities of it and the different directions we can go. It's just fun also for me... in Rival Schools I never got to get to into my guitar-playing – I just really stuck to rhythm stuff – but as a three-piece I'm really a lot more excited about my playing and looking forward to kind of just going with that.”

By all reports the transition as a live unit has also been handled with class, with the band eventually deciding to simply not worry about any potential replacement.

“I knew there were certain elements of what Ian did that I was going to have to mimic out in some way, and create my own version of it. I think the songs for the most part have their own structure and stability. I'd played a lot of them acoustically, so if this song goes over as a solo acoustic, it will go over as a three-piece. We've just gotta be confident and believe in it. That was pretty quick to come up with a three-piece version of Rival Schools – I think we got right to that quickly. We really wanted to solidify what was left before throwing some new guy into the mix and having to adjust and balance that. I didn't want the band to be about who this new person is, and what they're doing. I think in our minds, going to Australia and getting a chance to play together night after night, is kind of cool. Well for us, as Americans, going to Australia it's really fun, that it'd be a good place to really launch from there.”

Schreifels confirms that the band intends to begin tracking the next full-length “within six months” of returning from Australia, and suggests there are some new tangents he's very interested in exploring.

“I think when [Rival Schools] came out, the band really formed out of me having a record contract, and luckily being afforded the opportunity of, 'Yeah, make up a band.' I think it was coming off of the ex-Quicksand factor, and how do you take that, and take something new with that, and the band was kind of thrown together in that way, and we did something really cool and unexpected,” he reflects. “Then the second record was ten years later under different circumstances, but it still had the shadow of our first record over it. I feel like this next record won't have those [restrictions]... it can kind of be anything. It's not beholden to Quicksand and it's not beholden to United By Fate in terms of places that we should go. Just make something really forward-thinking is what I feel we should do, and just let ourselves go, and not try to force anything, and just play to our strengths. It's a cool opportunity to redefine the band, and some sort of movement in the story, as opposed to repeating things that we've done in the past. That's what excites me about it.”

Rival Schools will be playing the following shows:

Friday 14 September - The Zoo, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 15 September - Poison City Weekender, Corner Hotel, Melbourne VIC
Sunday 16 September - Enigma Bar, Adelaide SA
Wednesday 19 September - Annandale Hotel, Sydney NSW