Since 1997 Orange County California product Throwdown have come up through the ranks of the hardcore scene to become one of American metal’s better bands by way of punishing riffs and being pissed. On November 10th the band released their latest long player Deathless on E1. Chronic Youth caught up with singer Dave Peters to talk about the new record, scene trends, and his favorite So Cal hardcore.

On Throwdown’s relevance to the hardcore scene:
I feel like the thing with any sort of scene, things come in waves, it seems like there is such a shelf life within a particular scene. For us we came up in the hardcore scene, it shaped our band and who we are. We never really put our band in that context and we sort of just do what we do.  It’s also hard to tell nowadays how you’re perceived in one scene or another. I can’t really tell what a hardcore kid is versus any other kid. When I talk to kids at our shows, it seems like the younger kids are into us or older heads that grew with us.

On Deathless:
I think your always trying to challenge yourself and at all costs you are trying to outdo yourself. I’m 29 and I’ve been playing guitar longer than I haven’t and I want to do what I want to hear, rather than playing the game of what other people want to hear. We don’t want to write the same record over and over again. Our sound has just evolved naturally there’s not much premeditation going into it. The bottom line is being honest with ourselves as musicians. The second you start trying to do something it becomes forced. I think the bands that really stand the test of time are the ones that write music that are real to them. Throwdown might not get any bigger than it is today but we write what’s real to us. I think that separates a band like ours versus a band that’s doing something more premeditated. The bands that have influenced Throwdown like Madball, Pantera, and Sepultura 15 years ago get more play from me than newer records do.

On Fashion and the Orange County scene:
We just look horrible in eyeliner so it was a pretty easy decision for us not to fall into that you know? (Laughs) We grew up with all those guys and it’s funny because we are not generally the stereotypical orange county band at all, with the whole fashioncore. The truth is we never put much thought into at all; our music is just an extension of who we are. We never considered ourselves fashion models or anything. This isn’t to say I am slamming those bands for that we just never really thought about it. Trends of any sort will come and go, they did that and we won’t knock them for it. I guess we always stay mindful of what is timeless. The last thing we want to do is draw attention away from what’s important and worry about playing dress up.

On his favorite So Cal Hardcore:

Unbroken – The first hardcore band that I got into, the irony is that they are sort of metallic, especially Ritual. They did something different than a lot of the hardcore going on at the time.

Mean Season – I don’t know if a lot of people remember these guys, but I love them. They’ve reunited a couple of times and we played them. It was rad to share the stage with that band and have things come full circle.

Function – These guys were a local Huntington Beach band, I still see a couple of the guys from that band and know them from way back. They were the first hardcore band I heard because I went to middle school with their guitar player’s younger brother.

1134 – Matt their singer is in the same circle of friends and they were just always a great band.

Course of Disapproval and Excessive Force – These bands were a little more meatheadish straight edge bands that bridged my love for hardcore and metal. They kind of had a biohazard/helmet feel before it was cool to make hardcore heavy and people understood the idea of metalcore.

Words: David Castillo