Good Things Are Coming His Way

Walter Schreifels is doing okay. The driving force behind seminal New York hardcore band Gorilla Biscuits and the heavily influential - if somewhat forgotten - Quicksand, Schreifels is now fronting Rival Schools, whose debut album, United By Fate, is garnering critical praise in the mainstream and alternative press.
Quicksand broke up in 1995, as major label grunge became diluted enough to pave the way for bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit to take their place. Schreifels regrouped Quicksand for a tour with the Deftones, whose Chino Moreno is a big Quicksand fan, in late 1998, a tour that went well, but Schreifels found that the times had passed Quicksand by.
"I didn't want to do Quicksand after that," Schreifels said. "The Deftones, I mean Quicksand could never do what these guys are doing. The times have moved on. If you want to play metal now you've got to be really fucking willing to play fucking metal and I didn't feel that. I've done my time in the pit, I want to move on and do something else. It's not like I don't want people to dance, but I want them dance and feel it in a different way. There are definitely times that I miss a good mosh pit. It gives the show some drama. At our shows you have to find the drama somewhere else."
That drama lies in Rival Schools' layered songs, performed by musicians whose chemistry comes across on stage. The members have a long history with one another. Shreifels and drummer Sam Siegler had played together in Gorilla Biscuits and Youth of Today. Bassist Cache Tolman played with Siegler in CIV. Completing the picture was guitarist Ian Love of New York hardcore bands Burn and Die 116. The last member of Rival Schools to join up, Love's guitar playing is the target of a great deal of Schreifels' respect.
"He knows how to play guitar better than I do, in a technical sense," Schreifels said. "He's also got a very distinct style. With all the pedals, effects and stuff like that, I could never really do that, [because] that was not my expertise. I think also having the fourth member of the band - that also changed the chemistry within our four guys. We all started playing differently. I started playing differently. I started playing differently as soon as I started playing with Sam. I started to play to his strengths. When Cache joined that changed it again. Then when Ian plays, that changes it like a whole 'nother time. I think it's just natural that it works that way as opposed to getting a band together quickly."
Schreifels had always been the chief songwriter in his former bands, something that has changed in Rival Schools. While he still brings in riffs and frameworks for songs, the songwriting process has become more of a collaborative effort.
"We'll jam it," Schreifels said. "We'll go like, 'Well, maybe we should do that part longer. This could be a good idea for a transition.' I'll have a sketch, especially at that time, because I hadn't been doing music for a while. The bands that are successful at music are doing it all the time and I had not been. So I had been coming in with this sketchy shit. We would have to work on it hard and I would need these guys to help me nail it down. I value their opinions in that. We had to take extra care to get it to level where we could release an album."
United By Fate was released in August on Island Records at a time when rap-rock and bubble gum pop ruled the charts and MTV. Things were much different when Quicksand was putting out their records on a major label.
"Quicksand came out at a time when that was really the state of mind, that anybody could be the next Nirvana," Schreifels said. "People were chasing that down. Our scene was definitely separate from that whole mainstream type of scene and definitely separate from the metal scene. We had our own thing happening, but the climate in the major label was like, 'Maybe it's these guys, I don't know. I don't understand this music.'"
Still, Schreifels is comfortable being on a major.
"I think the label believes in us in a big picture," Schreifels said. "They're hoping that we go out and we play, that we work on it and then you get a song on the radio and then you can make something happen in a mass way. A major label has to do a certain amount of signing wacky bands 'cause you just never know. You keep all your shit and you get this 'cause that's like that, but every once in awhile you've gotta have this wacky band."
This wacky band has released an album that varies from aggressive rock numbers to upbeat pop rock, like the song "Good Things." The songs are marked by a guitar sound cultivated from influences like My Bloody Valentine. Schreifels simple rhythms are enhanced by Love's unique use of effects, creating swirling sounds and atmospheric layers. Though of course, having an original sound does have its drawbacks.
"We don't sound like, 'Just put 'em on the Vagrant tour. Throw 'em out with Linkin Park," Schreifels said. "We're kind of our own category. That's really cool because you have your own thing happening, but it's also [that] you don't immediately click with everybody. If you're a hardcore band and you have the mosh parts, you'll get the hardcore scene to like you to a degree. Even when I was involved in hardcore, I was doing my own thing within that."
Doing his own thing has included breaking up bands at the height of their popularity. And while as a fan, watching your favorite band break up can be disheartening, that action can have its perks as well. Quicksand and Gorilla Biscuits both broke up before they released any crap albums, and the journey from those bands to Rival Schools has had a big payoff. Schreifels is doing exactly what he wants to be doing.
"The goal for me is, honestly, to just do it. I don't have any loftier goals," Schreifels said. "There's definitely things that I would hope for it, like I would hope for it to be massively successful and I make a lot of money and I make people happy in the process. For me, I was in a state where I wasn't making music at all and I know how to play guitar and I know how to sing and I felt like I was wasting that. I really wanted to just get out on a stage and play, get that experience and so right now, that's what I'm doing. In a sense that's all I ever wanted from it, anything else would be cool. I'm lucky enough that we're able to do it in a style where it's nice for everybody."

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