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When Frodus broke up, it's human agents scattered to the four winds, planting the seeds of rebellion by establishing new cells around the globe. Finally, they regrouped to form the Decahedron: a monolithic geometric expression of the towering control of the modern state. Totalitarianism isn't just a word anymore, kids. Composed of former members of Frodus and Fugazi, Decahedron's debut album Disconnection_Imminent is the soundtrack to your repression and eventual liberation. Images become unmoored from their meanings, symbols become more important than what they're supposed to represent. Before you can be free you have to forget everything you know, you must realize that you are not the master of your own thoughts and actions. Decahedron are the sound of spark-plugs breaking, of modems catching fire, of electrons spinning out of control. It is not the sound of a society out of control: it is the realization that the opposite is true. You try to get a fix on the real world but the real world is designed specifially to divert you from seeing it for what it is. Before their album was even released they faced opposition: their former name, The Black Sea, was already 'owned'. Bassist Joe Lally soon quit the operations as well. Luckily the band found a sympathetic party in the form of Johnathon Ford, bassist of Unwed Sailor and formerly of Roadside Monument. Here is Decahedron's first full-band interview, presented for propaganda purposes. Hear the message, learn freedom, construct reality, delete false culture.
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Frodus/The Cassettes The Black Sea Contest Decahedron Contest Alright, first thing: What happened to Joe Lally? Jason: At what point do you want to know about Joe Lally? Like what happened to him emotionally or … ? Sure … if you know what happened to him emotionally. Was he scarred? Shelby: No, he was just at a different place in his life and wanted to focus more on family. And even when he was considering maybe playing live with us, he was a little unsure--just because his wife is from Italy and she moved here and they had a kid. And he just kind of wanted to focus on that and not do a band from the ground up, necessarily, again. So, we were finishing the record and then they went to Los Angeles a couple of times and she has childhood friends there. It was kind of her turn; for him to follow her somewhere for like a year or so and see how it goes. Maybe come back to DC later when Fugazi picks up. It just wasn't the right time for him. So Fugazi is going to pick up? Shelby: They plan on it. I mean, they're all older--and Brendon has like his third kid or something. So you know, whenever they feel like it. And Jason Wood [of Engine Down] dropped out as the touring bassist a long time ago right? Jason: Basically, the concept was Joe records, Jason plays live. Then Joe changed his mind and said, "I'll play live." And then we told Jason we didn't really need him to play with us because Joe's going to do it live. Was he hurt? Jason: I don't think so. I mean, in the long run it would have been bad for us because he would have had to have quit at this point because of Engine Down stuff. So it would have been like the same cycle over and over and over again. You seem to have inherited the old bass player problem. Jason: Yeah. You're permanent now right? Studio and tour? Johnathon: Yes, I am permanent. Shelby: And we've known Johnathon for 10 years. We traded a Frodus demo--when we were in high school--with his band, Mr. Bishop's Fist, in Oklahoma. So we've always kind of been intertwined with Johnathon. And then, Frodus did this split with Roadside Monument and then Johnathon just came along with us on our tour. He's just always been around and we dubbed him 'The Unwed Sailor' back in '97. We're responsible for his future band name, which is also his present band. So you're going to be doing both at the same time? Johnathon: Yes. Joe's distinct bass sound is a really integral part of Decahedron's aesthetic; at times the band seems to fall back on the interplay of the rhythm section even more than Frodus did. I noticed when you played live that Johnathon's vocal delivery really punched up the songs that Joe sang on the album, but how will his approach to the bass change or affect the band's sound on future recordings? He used a lot of pedals. Shelby: Johnathon definitely uses more pedals and is more into atmospherics with bass and bass chords along with a certain sense of repetition that is unique to his playing. Johnathon is a very strong bass player so I feel that the band will focus on rhythmic interplay. We have some new songs - one of which we are playing live now, and it's all about bass and drums with the guitar kind of floating above it.
Why not release the new album on Fueled by Ramen? Shelby: Just because I've been working with Lovitt a lot with a bunch of my other stuff and we've all been really close friends with Brian [Lowit, head of Lovitt Records]. It just didn't work out that Frodus ended up doing the full-on album [2001's …And We Washed Our Weapons in the Sea] on Lovitt. It just kind of happened naturally. Jason: Basically, our friend Tony Weinbender--who is an old time friend of ours--worked at Fueled By Ramen. And the Frodus record was going to come out on a million different other labels but since we broke up, no one would put it out. Tony was like, "Oh, we'll put it out on Fueled by Ramen," and they did a good job, no complaints, awesome label. But for what we do … it's not what we do. You guys seem to fit in better with Engine Down and the Lovitt bands than with Fall Out Boy, I guess. Jason. [chuckling] Fall Out Boy. It's one of their new ones. Shelby: Don't look at me. Jason: Lovitt Records? Shelby: Fueled by Ramen. Jason: Oh, oh. I was like, "Brian Lowit's stoned." [laughing] Fall Out Boy. Most new bands usually try to distance themselves from the old bands they were involved with, but you guys seem to be consciously picking up the strings --thematically and sound-wise, I guess -- of Frodus' stuff. Why is that? Shelby: I think it's natural, just because Jason and I are playing together. If we try and do something weird, it always ends up … what we do. Jason: I don't think it's a conscious "let's sound like this", it's kind of like what happens. You know what I mean? Shelby: I think if things didn't happen in the world -- recently, even though with 9/11 and the Iraq War and stuff -- maybe our album would have sounded a little more atmospheric like the Black Sea album. But basically after all this stuff happened we were effected and it was just time to scream and just be pissed off instead of just being passive and arty.
On the last Frodus record, it seemed that you guys were tired of doing the hardcore screaming thing, and even more-so on the Black Sea album. I guess you already answered my question. Shelby: Well, this record isn't all screaming either. It's a lot more dynamic and more interesting. We just wanted to do something different with the Frodus record because we did so many records of just complete insanity where I would just try to fill up as much space as possible with my guitar and it just got boring. I just one day kind of let my other influences come through and approached the guitar differently. Jason: [whispering] We all approach the instruments differently… How differently? Jason: My whole thing on the Frodus record is … during the songs I would just completely invert the drum beats. What I was playing on bass and snare, I'd switch in the middle and play on snare and bass. It's kind of weird, that turned into like … my deal and I do it all the time. That's a new approach. Do you think the world is becoming more and more what Washed Our Weapons in the Sea projected it as? Jason: What do you think it projected it as? Kind of cold menacing place on the verge of destruction? Jason: I think music is that. I think the music world is that. Shelby: The music world? Jason: I think the music world -- the world of music -- is exactly what you just said. Shelby: Cold, menacing? Yeah I guess it is, in as far as like a sense of commodification, just a lot of entertainers and a few artists, maybe. I don't know, even like independent scale there's a lot more like politics and people getting into the sound and kind of creating bands, as opposed to the mid-90s when we were doing stuff more like some sort of cultural explosion. With like the Gravity Records scene in California and all these ... whatever you want to call it … post-emo, post-punk bands. It's just a little different. But I think as far as the world goes … maybe not as bleak to the point of destruction. I think maybe the new Decahedron album kind of captures the present state of things. Just a little more paranoia yet different people not agreeing with what the government's doing and a lot of different ideas thrown in there. Jason: It's kind of unsure of what's actually happening. Shelby: Yeah, uncertainty. So, does satire become the truth then? Shelby: Yeah, to an extent. The new album's not satirical at all really. It's pretty straight-forward, all the lyrics and everything. It seemed like some of the old stuff was. Shelby: Yeah definitely, Conglomerate and stuff was a little more like a sci-fi concept record. Johnathon Ford sang back-ups on Conglomerate. I didn't even know there were back-up vocals. Jason: For "Explosions": 'We like explosions.' Johnathon: Yeah, that was it, just those words. It's one of the best songs on the album. Jason: That's the one that we didn't write.
[Frodus seemed to be anticipating something, and the Black Sea seemed to be looking back] are you going to continue that trajectory with Decahedron? Shelby: I guess with this band we just want to be challenged so … We have no idea what the next stuff will sound like so … Is it a significant change from the EP? Shelby: Yeah I think so. The last song, "Endings", I feel like was written around the time of the EP and it was a little song I was writing with Joe and then we kind of all started changing things up. I think if anything, that song sounds like an EP song but everything else is pretty different. What do you think John? You've heard both. Johnathon: Oh I like Decahedron better than the Black Sea. Shelby: How is it different? Johnathon: I think Decahedron is more aggressive than the Black Sea. I think it's kind of more menacing and darker. What was the problem with the name 'The Black Sea'? Jason: There's a band from New Jersey that no one's heard of called The Black Sea. They had a thousand records in 1990, alright? They emailed us out of the blue. It was like, "Hey, we own the trademark to this, stop using the name." Can you own the trademark to a body of water? Jason: It's not a body of water, it's the name used in relation to selling records. You can trademark it for record sales. But isn't there even another band with the name The Black Sea? Shelby: The Black C with the letter C. Jason: There's four of us. There's the old band that had something distributed through Rough Trade and no one had heard of them. We'd never heard of them, and we did research and stuff. That guy called and was like, "You know, you need to change the name in case we ever want to get back together and play some shows." It's like … just lame. So we spent a couple months trying to figure out what to call ourselves. Then I checked the website and looked at the company that owned it and it was different than the guy that emailed me. So, I emailed the company that owned it and it was a completely different 'The Black Sea', also from New Jersey. It was an electronic band. I emailed them and asked them, and they're like, "You need to change your name." So I emailed the guy that originally emailed me and was like, "What the hell are you talking about? You don't own anything. You've got no legal standing, in fact you can't even be using the name 'The Black Sea'. Why don't you email the guy that actually owns the trademark?" Following the circle here? Yeah. Jason: It's just … comedy. So we changed to Decahedron.
Where'd you come up with Decahedron? Jason: I did not. Shelby: I was just on tour with the Cassettes, sitting in the van and it just popped into my head. Then it by our keyboard/accordion player Steven, who's been a big Frodus fan for a long time, and I just said, "Decahedron. What do you think?" And he was like, "That's it." Jason: I was like, "That's not it." [laughing] Shelby: Then once Jason found out the phonetics of it, he likes it. Jason: Because people were pronouncing it 'Deca-he'd-ron' and that's a bum out, I can't handle that. So I went online and got one of those computers to pronounce it for me, [in computer voice] 'Deca-he-drun'. Then I saw the logo that he made up and I thought it was awesome. What was Red Sky Above, who did it involve and why did it fold? Shelby: Red Sky Above was the working-title for a band that we were doing with our friend, Clark Sabine, who played in The Motorcycle Wars. We were writing songs and getting things together and were trying out bassists and then 9/11 happened and our bassist from Chicago (actually the first Frodus bassist, Jim Cooper) that we were going to try out never made it out since his flight got grounded and then when we planned on regrouping we just kind of fizzled out.. The chemistry wasn't all there and I decided that I didn't want to deal with it and I focused on finishing the first Cassettes album around the time we stopped playing. However, it was just temporary as Jason and I still wanted to do some stuff together and we picked it up a few months later before he went with INC.
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