Going Postal from NYC are up next on Fresh Blood. They are a pre-Covid formed band who got blocked from playing shows much like everyone else did during the 2020 quarantines. To date they have played only 8 shows and had their debut self-titled EP come out on WTF Records in August. I caught them play live in Valley Stream, NY on October 15th and felt their live set blew away their very solid debut recording. On top of their EP songs sounding more explosive live some of their newer tracks were even better. This interview took place in the municipal parking lot right next to the Railroad Inn on that night they played in October.
Going Postal is: Ted- vocals, Larry- guitar, Frank- bass, and Matt- drums. Graphics by: John Franko
IE: From watching some of the bands that have already played here tonight it sounds like the Friday night traffic has been quite a nightmare. Tell us about your individual journeys to get to the famed Railroad Inn here in beautiful Valley Stream.
Larry: Before I left for here I was hit with a 14 day suspension at work for my attendance.
Ted: Really?!!
Larry: I told my supervisor to fucking blow me. I went and delivered some packages, went back to the station at the end, asked what I had to do to transfer out of Manhattan and then I took the subway to the Long Island Railroad to get out here.
Frank: I hooked up with the rest of the guys and we drove from Staten Island through Brooklyn and Queens on the Belt Parkway and it was a nightmare!
Ted: The Belt Parkway was a parking lot. Larry had a much more adventurous day.
Matt: I would trade my car ride for Larry’s train ride any day!
IE: Going Postal recently put out your first recorded material in the form of a 5 song EP out now on WTF Records. For people who have not checked your band out yet what can they expect? What kinds of things were being discussed as far as the musical direction of this band when things started coming together?
Ted: Going Postal got started with me and Larry going to a local beer hall near us every week for months. It took a while. We would go out and like gripe and drink and talk about what we wanted to do. We have similar tastes in music although I am a little bit more in the past than Larry, maybe a little more old-school. The early joke was that Going Postal was just going to be a dart team.
Frank: When I first met these guys they told me they had a drummer but they told me his leg was broken. Sean, the singer of Examine told me about these guys and that they were looking for a bass player. I was already playing for Point Blank but am always looking for more stuff to get into so I said yeah, I’d give it a try. The next thing I know I am going to hang out at the beer hall with these guys and we hit it off.
Ted: The first thing after all the talk was we went over to Larry’s house and Frank was like “well I got this thing” and played a little bit and then Larry was like “I got this thing” and we went from there.
Frank: I think the first riff that we worked on was the one that became the song “Going Postal”. What these guys didn’t know… and they give me a lot of shit for it even now is that I love hair metal. That song actually started as a hair metal riff just fucking around but I didn’t tell them that I thought it was a hair metal riff at first. Haha. I love everything from hair metal and punk to classic rock and to me Going Postal has some classic rock vibes to it... to me anyway.
IE: Two songs off the EP… “Going Postal” and “The Barker” have political messages behind them, sort of in a “both sides suck” type of way. Ted, can you talk about what you like to write about lyrically and maybe expand on these two songs?
Ted: I like to write more personal type of stuff. Like personal shit going on in my head. These songs were all written during the whole Trump presidency which caused a lot of fire on both sides. Everyone talks about how America is the best country in the world but…
Frank: It is! God bless America, that’s all I gotta say!
Ted: There is a lot of fucked up, fundamental problems with people having to scrape by to make a living wage… that’s fucked up. With a country that has so much fucking money there is no reason why there should be any homeless. Jeff Bezos from Amazon sending William Shattner into space could probably feed NYC’s homeless for a year. I just try to write about things that matter to me and Larry also helps with them as well.
Larry: I think I have written some of the best lyrics I have ever written in my musical span with this band and I think it is partially because of I have become aware of who the fuck I am.
Ted: This band has a weird dynamic for sure, I write lyrics, Larry writes some lyrics. I tend to lean to the more personal introspective side… they say write what you know right? But when it's comes to the more political side, we have a vast degree of separation within the band, and of course it can be a struggle sometimes. I would say I tend to lean a lot more to the liberal side then the rest of the band, not in the way that liberal is used today, but like, I've been to Europe… especially Northern Europe, and have seen how they do things, and the standard of living is a lot higher across the board from the poorest to the richest than it is here, you don't have the mega rich, but even the poorest have decent apartments to live in, and that's a tradeoff I'll take any day. I'm no communist, but I certainly feel that unrestrained capitalism is the reason why our country is in the shit state it's in these days, and I try to reflect that in my lyrics when I get political. My band mates probably wouldn't agree with me to varying degrees, but that's where I'm coming from. Then for the rest I just use it as an outlet for whatever I may be struggling with personally in my personal relationships, everyday life etc. Just try and paint a picture that maybe people can relate to because they are going through the same shit. Let's face it life isn't easy for anyone, but it's what you make of it right? I try to keep a positive outlook on things, it doesn't always work out, but fuck it, you do the best you can right? Or just give up. I'm not giving up.
IE: The name Going Postal is a term that many people know and it is basically losing your shit beyond control where you resort to some level of violence. What are some things that you deal with in your everyday lives that may cause you to one day “go postal”?
Frank: Just dealing with people. I deal with people who have a lot of money and they are the worst. You know that Slipknot song “People=Shit”? That’s my motto!
Ted: Going to work, not the actual work necessarily but the “getting to work” part.
Larry: I work in the white privilidged center of NYC and it sucks. I hate SOHO.
Frank: Can I get back to the lyrics for a second? Larry wrote the lyrics to “FTW” and that second part? Dude, I am just giving him props. That second part with the lyrics “together forever”… that part just spoke to me and I was like damn, this is how I am feeling. That was deep. I am not a lyric writer, I can’t write lyrics for shit. I write riffs and bring music to the band but when I heard those lyrics I thought they were great... I love it.
Ted: One of the things I really like about how we work as a band is that it’s all a collaborative effort. It might be Frank or Larry bringing a riff or Matt bringing it all together with his drum parts.
Frank: The real musician in this band is this man right here (pointing to Matt).
IE: Going Postal signed on with WTF Records out of the Netherlands despite not having any recorded material out before this new one. Ted, did you show Tim from WTF Records any Going Postal music before he made the decision to put out your EP or was he strictly going off his past experiences with you because you were in the band Olde York who WTF did some work with a few years back?
Ted: I was like “hey Tim, check this out”… and it wasn’t even the fully mixed material. It was just the rough mixes after we recorded and right away he said he would put our record out. Props to him, he has done an awesome job and we really appreciate it. We had some struggles getting everything out. We still did a lot of this shit ourselves and had some struggles along the way.
IE: What kind of struggles did you have?
Ted: Just like the CD graphics… none of us are graphic designers. I went over to Larry’s place with my computer…
Larry: And I smoked a half ounce of weed while I hovered over Ted. “no, no, do this… no, no, put it in that color... “
Ted: And then I had to take what we did and had to figure out what commercial printers need to make a CD cover. There were some fuck ups along the way. On the original pressing of the CD, and there are some floating out there... Matt is listed as a band member but the word drums is cut off. Everyone else had their name and instrument. At least it wasn’t listed with drums first and then no name at all! We worked with Tim and he was mad cool about it because problems like that were totally on me.
IE: Would you like to comment on this sort of Dutch/NYHC alliance WTF Records has been building up with his last bunch of signings?
Ted: He signed Frank’s other band, Point Blank.
Frank: The Car Bomb Parade is on there too now as well as Crippled Earn.
Ted: Car Bomb Parade is on there too now? I think it is great, the more this music gets out there the better.
Larry: It gives us people to call upon, like if we are booking a show and we’re thinking about who we’re going to get we will now be looking to our label mates in most cases and see if they are available.
PHOTO BY: MIGUEL VAZQUEZ
IE: There was a show in Astoria recently that was supposed to have a bunch of the NY bands signed to WTF Records. How did that go?
Ted: It was supposed to be all WTF bands but Scarboro dropped off at like the last minute. Bitch Switch took their place but then they got into a car accident.
IE: How many new songs have been written since your EP came out and what is the timeline on whatever will be the next Going Postal release?
Larry: We have about 20 songs and have written around 10 new ones since the EP came out.
Ted: We have the 5 songs that were on the EP, and then another 5 that is our current live set and we got another 10 on the deck as we speak. You heard a bunch of them tonight. We are looking to record again in January for a full length.
IE: What are some of the newer songs that you might be really high on that you already know will be on the full length when it comes out?
Matt: “One Red Cent”, “Alone”… for sure that will be on it. “Slipped Away”…
Ted: "World Destroyer” and “The Commuter” are two other new ones that we like a lot.
IE: You guys are getting ready to set out on a long weekend that will see you doing shows in Georgia, Florida and South Carolina. Once I saw these dates posted I immediately wanted to ask you guys why you picked these places which are pretty far away from NY, especially for a new band that just put out their first ever recorded material. (Note: This weekend of shows happened between October 21st through the 24th).
Larry: It all started with an Instagram friend of mine that said he wanted us to come down and play in his area in Florida. After we said we were interested he said he would get back to us and he actually came through for us. So now we are thinking we have to hit at least one city on the way down there and to try and divide things up a little. The guy in Florida is named Kelly and he gave me some connections for the other shows. For the last show of this run I went back to a band called Triangle Fire from Georgia that I had booked on their tour in NY so I figured I would just ask them if they could help us out and they came through and they hooked it up. We will be playing with them at an outdoor all ages place.
IE: If you could put together a dream tour together and bring any three bands along with you who would they be and where would you be playing?
Frank: Me? I would go down to South America because the fans down there are insane. I would love to play with Helmet, The Misfits, and… I am going to go with Megadeth. I would love to play with them.
Matt: For me it is weird because bands that I listen to I wouldn’t necessarily want to play with Going Postal. This is going to sound weird because I am a big fan so My Chemical Romance for sure, I love old-school punk stuff. Definitely Knocked Loose, they are such cool guys, I met them once in Philly somewhere, not exactly sure where but there was a cheesesteak place in the distance, and the last one? Shit… I think just those two would be good enough. As far as where to play I am a big fan of no name venues. I played this bar in North Carolina and this guy Jarred just put speakers everywhere and he turned it into a fucking rager. It was a big ass garage that looked like a fucking barn. It was huge and he packed that shit out.
Larry: CBGB’s is still active, Going Postal are going to open, and it is Incendiary, Blacklisted, and the headliner will be Whores from Georgia.
Ted: I would want to do Europe with Sick Of It All, All For Nothing and Yuppicide.
PHOTO BY: MIGUEL VAZQUEZ
IE: Name a cover song that you always wanted to do that you know your bandmates would never agree to.
Larry: “I Spy” by the Dead Kennedy’s… I would love to do that and I don’t want the singer to sound like Jello. Yuppicide’s “Stranded” … there are probably like 99 songs that I would want to cover by Yuppicide and Baby Huey “Hard Times” turned into a hardcore song.
Ted: My old band before Olde York covered “Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats but I always wanted to do “The Edge” by Token Entry. “Tom Sawyer” by Rush would also make for an awesome hardcore song.
IE: It was brought up for a moment while you were performing earlier tonight but for the record what do you think each of you would have been doing tonight if you weren’t booked on this show?
Ted: If we didn’t have this show I probably would have been home making dinner and hanging out with the family.
Frank: I would have been home drinking some Jack and Coke watching some black and white movie… honestly.
Matt: I would be doing one of three things. I would either be sleeping, at the gym boxing, or just practicing the drums. I love being at home and watching TV while I hit my practice pads.
Larry: Smoking weed and jerking off. My favorite pastimes.
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