I recently had a chance to sit down with Beast, the singer/songwriter for Detroit’s H8 Inc, who’s newest CD “A Clockwork Misery” is getting my vote for one of the best hardcore albums to come out in a long time. If you’re a fan of hardcore, these guys will blow ya away. Check out the interview below.

How did the band get started?

Beast: My cousin Darrel Maniac, came up with the name around 85′-86′, he’s a tattoo artist, he came up with the name skateboarding and all that. A lot of kids were writing skate with the number eight, tagging it all over the place, and he was tattooing and all that stuff, so being a pissed off kid or whatever, he started writing hate with the number eight. Like the skaters were doing with the word skate SK8, and added the word Ink ya know, for  tattoos. He was trying to promote his thing, so that was like his tag. It became his thing, everybody knew Darrel from H8 Ink. He invented the name and played bass little bit, and I wanted to get a band going about 95′. I approached him and said, “we should turn that into a band”. He’s had a lot of trouble with the law, being in and out of prison, he said yeah lets do it. Then he went to prison, so I hit him up, we were writing each other while he was in prison, I asked him if I could get this band going, I want to do it now, and when you get out you can play bass, and he said yeah, fuckin do it man. So I wrote my friends in Cold As Life, and said “hey you guys want to do a side project”?  They said yeah, so that’s how it all got started. It went slow for a long time man, I mean because Cold As Life was the band, even though I was writing all the music on the guitar, and I would show them guys what I wrote, they were working a lot on Cold As Life shit. They were doing a lot of shows, a lot of tours and they were getting bigger around 96-97. They were getting real big, so H8 Inc. was going real slow at first, I mean we still go slow, what are you going to do, hardcore band ya know.

How many releases ya got out?

Beast:  Three albums, with a re-release of the second one. The first one is “Fraternal Order of Felons“, a lot of that music was our first music from 96-97′ but we didn’t go into the studio until 99′ and it didn’t get released until 2001. It was just a money issue ya know, because I was doing it all myself, all the finances and everything, it was all up to me, I paid for all of it.

All the promoting and shit?

Beast: I did the distribution and everything. Then the second one was in 2004, “Life of Pain” and that was the same deal. I financed it, promoted it, and distro’d it through other distribution companies. Now we put out this third one just recently, a lot of this music that we had on this new one we already had as early as 05-06, but it was a money issue again, to get into the studio and all that shit. Plus my guys, everybody has got their thing going on with their jobs and families or whatever, and it’s hard working around that shit sometimes. We finally got the money together to get into the studio and make it happen. “A Clockwork Misery” is the third one, and then re-released “Life of Pain” on vinyl, Ltd. 500 color copies.  Craig Holloway who does a lot of my artwork, released it for us. He did Agnostic Front, Wisdom In Chains, Murderer’s Row, Brick by Brick, a bunch of bands… Cro Mags, I mean you name it, a lot of posters and flyers. He’s been doing a lot of shit and doing really good. He’s an old CTYC cat from Detroit, he lives in Texas now, but back in the day he did all the artwork for Cold As life. All the flyers and shit, some of their merchandise, but he re-released the “Life of Pain” on vinyl in 2008, and he wanted to do it, he called me up because I told him about it. I thought having a vinyl would be great, so he called me up one day and said “do you still want to do that vinyl? I’ll release it for ya” and I said Fuck yeah, so that’s how that happened.

What color vinyl ya got Life of Pain on?

Beast: They are all different colors, it’s a 500 Ltd. press, mixed colors, not one is the same really. They’re going slow, it’s not really getting distributed, whoever knows about it will hit me or Craig up and they can get it. Craig did a really good job on it. It’s pretty dope, I gave him some good photos, it’s got a pull out poster with the lyrics and shit on it. On the other side, it’s got all the flyers he did for H8 Inc. up to that time. He did the front cover and killed it. The back cover was actually half his, the other half was a collaboration with my cousin Darrel Maniac. He did some airbrush on one of the tattoo shops he worked at on a wall there, and Craig seen the picture of it and asked him “hey is it cool if I use that for the record?” and he said fuck yeah. So he put it on there and then realized it was airbrushed, it looked like spray paint. So we said why don’t we put Darrel on there spray painting the shit on the wall, and Craig drew Darrel spray painting what he actually airbrushed, so it was pretty sweet.

Are ya on a label right now?

Beast: No, but I just got management from Black and Blue Productions. They are managing H8 Inc. now, and they are working on getting us signed, hopefully that will come to pass. With this new record, “A Clockwork Misery”, again like I said, I released it myself and it’s hard work, I don’t want to do it again. We did the first pressing in October 2009, it was our record release show. We played with the Cro-Mags in Detroit. So from October until now the first 1000 presses are gone already. I got like 30 copies left and I have a lot of orders coming in too. I can’t fill them until I re-press, so I have to wait until I find out what’s going on with this label shit because hopefully they’ll take care of that.

Only 1000 initially pressed?

Beast: Yeah, I was going to 2000 but I got to thinking about our technology and shit. Most people when they get a CD, they swap it in to their iPod and give it to their buddies. Not a lot of people are getting hard copies anymore, which is one of the main reasons I was psyched about the vinyl. That’s the only hard copy people want anymore, that I can tell… I might be wrong. For the most part everybody’s got iPods and shit like that nowadays, so I was like fuck it, I’ll just do 1000 copies. It was cheaper, and we got to see how it goes over first. It’s going well, people are still asking for it, so we’ll press 1000 more and see how it goes from there. It’s hard work, and we take ourselves seriously, but still have fun doin it.

I know what your sayin, I’ll get a burned CD from a friend, and I’ll like it, then I’ll have to go buy it just for the original artwork.

Beast: Yeah I’m like that too, a lot of times I want the artwork, certain bands sometimes I won’t though. I’ll get a band and be like ehhh, good stuff but I don’t care about their artwork or whatever it is, it’s a shame I shouldn’t say that… but whatever hahahaha.

Yeah, collecting vinyl is one of my things. I don’t even own a record player

Beast: Yeah, you got to have it. It’s just one of those things if you like music a lot it’s priceless, it is to me ya know.

Are you touring with anybody now?

Beast: We’re not touring a lot, we did a little stint in December and January in New York, and played with Cro-Mags at Santos party house. It’s a new place by Chinatown, their Christmas show, it was a good club. It had a really good sound, it sold out, and was a great fuckin show. Kids were going crazy, we sold at ton of merch and people liked us. So we did that in January, we did a few shows in Pennsylvania, like three shows in New York and one in Jersey, we get out when we can. My guitar player Enzo, he has a kid that’s like two years old, and has another one on the way, so he’s busy working seven days a week and it’s hard for him to get out sometimes. And my drummer thing… I always have to swap my drummer with my original drummer, because my drummer now, Jessie, goes out on tour with the Coffin Cats sometimes and does their merch and shit. He always has something going on so I have to get Roy boy, the original drummer for Cold As Life (and our original drummer) to fill in for him whenever he’s not around. It’s kind of hard juggling them two dudes sometimes, but they both pull it off and they both kill it. We don’t get out a lot but when we do, we make it count.

I can imagine that must be hard, how much do you rehearse?

Beast: When we got shows and shit we’ll rehearse twice a week, but if nothings going on we’ll rehearse once a week, or once every two or three weeks just to pass the time. We’re a pretty tight band, everybody knows their role and their on point with what to play, so when we don’t have much going on we don’t have to practice a lot. We got the shit down.

Who does all the songwriting?

Beast: I write all the music and the lyrics, it’s been that way since the band started. I play the guitar and write everything on the guitar. I pretty much orchestrate the drums, them guys, they contribute and put their two cents in, but for the most part I’m the Maestro. On this new album though actually, I take that back a little bit, Enzo and Jake my guitar and bass player, wrote two of the songs on there, “We Hate the World” and “Your Time”. They wrote them two songs, so I got a give them credit, big props for that, two of the best songs on the record for sure.

Any band ya really wanna get out there and play with?

Beast: Sick Of It All, we haven’t played with Sick Of It All yet, that would be cool. I love them dudes, but haven’t got a chance to play with them yet. I’ve been listening to them and going to their shows since they started, I’ve got a lot of respect for them. We’ve played with some of the bands I’ve always wanted to play with, and it means a lot to all of us, it’s cool.. but haven’t played with Sick Of It All yet.

You guys gonna play the Black and Blue Bowl this year?

Beast: It’s being thrown out there. I’m not going to say for sure, but it’s being talked about. Hopefully that comes to pass so we can throw down there again. We played there in 2007, and I’m going to say, when we played we weren’t as tight at the time, because we just started tour when he played that show. We did a US tour, took a month off, and then did a European tour supporting the Cold As Life reunion. That was like our fourth show of the US tour so we were a little rusty. We are a lot tighter now than we’ve ever been, and I couldn’t be happier with the guys, the way they sound, the new album, everything. Hopefully if we end up playing were going to kill it.

Who produced the album?

Beast: My bro, Jay Clifton here in Detroit, he played in a bunch of bands. Dogs of War, who my guitar players Jake and Enzo also played in. He also played in Earth Mover, The Alliance, he played in a lot of bands and has a studio in his house. He’s an engineer for The Tempermill, the proper studio, we did the drums there, then went back to Jay’s house and finished everything else in his studio. I was kind of behind him orchestrating some shit but he pretty much did all that. He calls it “Black Feather Studio” out of Westland Michigan,  which is 20 minutes west of Detroit. He’s got a bedroom hooked up with all his gear in it. He does a really good job. He did a great job with this record, that’s my dude, he gave us a really good price. I really gotta give props to Jay Clifton. Without him we probably wouldn’t have been able to release the record when we did. Joey Z. from Life of Agony helped me out a lot too, he mastered the record, he is a friend of mine and gave us a really good deal on the mastering. Money’s tight in Detroit, it’s not easy… the economy’s fucked. I never thought I’d say that about this city but the “Motor City” is pretty much not the motor city anymore, this whole car industry thing is fucked. I’m a machinist myself, and I can’t even do that no more, I can’t find those kind of jobs anymore. I’m back in school in some heating and cooling shit, trying to get some shit taken care of . It’s rough, a lot of people are out of work, a lot of people are broke. So yeah, was hard for me to release this record.

The sound of the new one, it’s really old school and that’s what I love about it. With so much metal-core and new styles and shit, who or what were your influences for it?

Beast: I’ve been listening to punk, hardcore and street punk since I was a little kid, since the early 80’s when all started really. I was listening to the Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Negative Approach, it was a huge influence on me, as well as Sick Of It All, Agnostic Front and some Canadian thrash metal bands, it just kind of snowballed from there. I tried to mix it all together, but still keep the Detroit style. I see a lot of bands coming out nowadays, and I’m not taking anything away from them, and I’m not trying to disrespect them in any way, but a lot of stuff that comes out today sounds real similar. It’s got a lot of hooks and changes, and same guitar tones, I didn’t want to do that. I’m open-minded about a lot of music, and I’ve got an open mind about this alternative style that we like, punk and hard-core, street punk and everything. I wanted to try to blend that together when I wrote all these songs, and its cool it came across like that because that’s what I was shootin for. Sometimes I listen to it but I’m not really sure if it comes off heavier or more metal core and typical than I wanted it to.

So what’s next?

Beast: I booked Skarhead here in Detroit, April 16th at the Lager House, they are on like a three-month tour with their new album, “Drugs, Music & Sex”, it’s a fuckin bangin album. We might be doing a couple more three or four shows with them before and after that show. I still gotta find out what’s up with that, the dates and venues, so we’re working that out. Hopefully May 15 will be doing the Black and Blue Bowl… we’ll see. I can’t say for sure right now that were going to be doing it, but hopefully it will happen.