Strike Anywhere

“Those few spaces in the shows when you connect with people, and you’re singing along and everyone means it, and everyone knows that they mean it, that’s the most revolutionary part,” says Thomas Barnett, charismatic singer for hardcore band Strike Anywhere. “That’s the best part of punk and hardcore. It’s just a group therapy session.”

    Strike Anywhere exploded out of the fertile Richmond, VA, underground scene in 1999 with what seemed like enough urgency and sincerity to change the world, weaving fast and aggressive hardcore music together with emotionally heartfelt political lyrics. It’s been three years since their last release, Exit English, appeared and shocked everyone with its sheer intensity and articulate outrage. If you weren’t angry by the end of it, you weren’t paying attention.

    Now, having matured as songwriters and taken time to reflect, Strike Anywhere has released DeadFM, their first studio album on Fat Wreck Chords. It’s a work of well-crafted songs approached issue-by-issue rather than “having each line in a verse representing a particular injustice,” Thomas says. DeadFM thrashes at breakneck velocity with fist-pumping, sing-along melodies capable of uniting people from all wings of the underground music scene.

    While some may paint Strike Anywhere as leaders of the revolution, they’re just regular people constantly conflicted and confused about how to navigate their lives politically.

    “The idea of being a political person needs to be a lot more holistic and a lot more healthy,” Thomas says. “[It’s about] trying to live your life righteously but without the pretension, and without the strange addiction to social cliques that happens with activists, no matter what their good intentions are. There’s a certain level of trying to get back to the basics of life and enjoy what we have for the moment.”

    As Strike Anywhere has grown, new doors have opened for them in the music industry. Their struggle to remain a band of values and a band that’s relevant, and to honestly express that frustration in their music, is what makes them important.

    “We felt conflicted about doing most of the things that we did,” Thomas says, citing last summer’s Warped Tour adventure. “It was so hard not to feel cheapened and commodified. All of these things are learning experiences, and we have to figure out where we sit in every environment. Just being a punk band and trying to laugh at the absurdity, and not to take everything so goddamn seriously that we forget to live our lives. Living in the present is really important. That’s a really easy phrase [to say], but it’s probably the hardest thing to achieve. Getting abstracted into your different cliques and cults is an easy thing.

    “We just relish the moment to be able to say something that means something. We’re just trying to find our way and write songs about things that frustrate us. At the end of the day, we’re not scholars or professors. We’re just a bunch of friends who play music and we have the catharsis that so many people have with hardcore, it’s just attached to ideas.” 

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