Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Interview date: 25.09.2013
Few bands give you deep ideas that could change the world for the better on top of quality music, and not only for as long as that one catchy hook spins in your player, the kind that could move mountains for a moment. Ribnica’s preachers of quality punk with hardcore touches, the excellent Golliwog, are without doubt one important link that deserves special mention here, and not simply because they’re a quality punk rock band with Slovenian roots. More than anything, what draws me to this collective of actively thinking, well-read torchbearers of hope for changing the world for the better is that they can lucidly pinpoint the problems and open wounds of the world we live in, and instead of empty criticism with no solutions, they offer not just a mirror but also paths that could actually improve things. I respect people who have those few extra grams of wisdom above the average that melts into a gray, apathetic, faceless sameness. I respect the active building blocks of the new-age revolution of consciousness that we all talk about but nobody seriously sets out to make real. That’s exactly why I was glad to get in touch with Ribnica’s intellectual standard-bearers of musical resistance, advocates of a nonviolent, almost Gandhian revolution that would give the world back its light of hope. This interview came together in several steps as an email exchange, and besides the music we naturally dug deep into the burning questions of modern society.
Rockline: Golliwog, you’ve been carrying the punk rock torch for 15 years now. What was the road from the beginning to today, and which moments would you highlight as central to your musical identity (the ups and downs)? How has the band been doing over the last few years? Have the original principles that led to the founding changed in any way? What has the journey been like so far?
Matej Oven: In the beginning it was about escaping a boring everyday life, and about having fun. It was only about the music; the message didn’t play a role yet. Somehow we got our hands on the first instruments and a rehearsal space to play and hang out, and that’s how it all started. There weren’t any special ups and downs, because we don’t play to reach some kind of peaks (which is also how we spare ourselves the disappointment when we hit the lows). From the very start we’ve played because we love music and love doing this, so, no expectations. Just heart and soul. As long as it makes us happy and we truly enjoy it, we’ll keep doing it. Otherwise it would make no sense. I’ve been saying this from day one. The more you focus energy (the collective consciousness of the band) in the same direction, the greater the potential for making things happen. And right now I can say we really work well as a whole. Every member (with all their character traits) plays their role in the band well, so together we kind of fill all the gaps. We’re not bored. The new drummer brought new enthusiasm, and the rest of us quickly caught it too. We’re burning like we haven’t in a long time, and having fun while we’re at it! That doesn’t mean things were worse before or anything – when you’re with someone for that long, you go through different periods with them, and we had the toughest ones too, when it feels like the whole world has come crashing down on your head – which is of course an illusion, since it’s really just a very high-quality lesson. Sure, there are still days when the right motivation isn’t there, when masochistic listlessness takes over, but those are exceptions, and if we look at the whole picture and the push in the right direction, the current state is excellent!
Rockline: And what are the main pillars that define Golliwog as a musical entity and a musical collective of free individuals?
Matej: Like I said, there aren’t any particularly standout points here, but if I had to single out the bright spots of the band from the beginning until now, they’d definitely be both studio albums, then the release of an album on the Japanese label In-N-Out Records (mainly because it has quite a few bands from the two legendary California labels Epitaph and Fat Wreck Chords under its wing (Pulley, Strung Out, Rx Bandits…), which we’ve been listening to forever), playing with the bands that have been closest to our hearts since the very beginning (NOFX, Propagandhi, SNFU, Snuff, Anti-Flag, Sick Of It All, The Casualties, Dead To Me and others), connecting with other bands at home and abroad, the Got Punk II & Resist Fashion tours, loads of new friends we’d never have met without the band, and the fact that a new drummer from our home area showed up at just the right moment, so we can keep doing what we love most.
Rockline: I’d imagine that over this time things have changed substantially for you?
Matej: If anything has changed for us from the beginning until now, it’s mainly our values (from Dionysian – mostly hedonistic – to Apollonian, a full 180 degrees). From typical teenage hedonism to self-actualization and actively contributing to a more beautiful world for all of us. Many people say the world will never be more beautiful and that even thinking about it is utopian (even inside this scene, which is supposed to be actively contributing to exactly that, you find tons of people who’ve given up), but they don’t realize that with that mindset they cement themselves in the ‘now’ and so can’t feel positive change, let alone influence anything. To me that means surrender. They gave up before they even started. With a feeling of powerlessness, an individual locked in their own prison, we really won’t change a thing. We become our own obstacle. Activism for a better tomorrow is about changing ourselves first (and with that, everything that’s reflected outward), not about endless talking and rationalizing. It’s about integrity and consistency. It’s about doing good always and everywhere – not only when someone is watching. With honest good intentions, and not for applause! Action, not babbling nonsense! If we ourselves aren’t what we’d like the world around us to be, we lose all credibility in an instant, and then all the talk is pointless.
Rockline: But a person can be their own obstacle … – with their norms, their perception of themselves as the center of the universe around which everything revolves, and nothing can change because it is what it is, everything seemingly destined …
Matej: Yeah, the main obstacle is the human ego – the false Self and everything connected to it. Let’s forget the false ego and pride. When the ego “grows wings,” it’s really just a process that slows down spiritual development! That’s when we drift away from what we really are. Let’s clip those wings! Vanity leads us to ruin. And that’s really the “devil in disguise” everyone talks about so much. We live in a Luciferian society of pathological egoism, and the vast majority don’t even realize it. Yeah, Uncle Lucifer really is a master of camouflage. He hides in every one of us. But in every one of us there’s also free will and infinite potential. Whether we feed the ego and give in to the temptation of materialist vanity, or listen to and obey our true Self – heart and soul – is up to us. And it’s mostly an inner battle. The metaphor of the little devil on one shoulder and the little angel on the other is spot on, and it’s absurd that religion is exactly the thing that deserves an “epic fail” sticker slapped right on its forehead. Religion, go home, you’re drunk!
Rockline: So we build our own hell?
Matej: Pretty much. For ourselves and for others. ‘Lucifer’ or ‘Satan’ represents the Ego, which is based on the philosophy of ‘I act for myself’ and is in eternal war with the ‘Source’, representing the true Self, unconditional love, which is based on the philosophy of ‘I act for the good of others’. The true Self is the epicenter of the whole being. It’s the sum total of everything we are. The false Ego, on the other hand, is an idea and a concept we create about ourselves during our life on Earth, and it usually excludes all the traits we don’t want to accept about ourselves. So Satan isn’t a single person, an entity, or evil personified, but a dualistic concept of the division of consciousness that exists in each of us, splits us, separates us from each other and from the Source, that is, the true Self. It’s our intolerance, anger, fear, arrogance, selfishness, insincerity, greed, envy… The soul (love) therefore unites us, brings us closer, raises our vibration and enables the evolution of consciousness, while the Ego (fear) separates us and strives for the devolution of consciousness.
Rockline: That rather unexpected turn toward a transformation of mental postulates is almost religious in nature. So what are the main ethical anchors that could save us from sinking further into the quagmire of hopelessness?
Matej: First we have to learn to recognize the ego and the human traits connected to it (in today’s self-absorbed society even that is a big problem). The “7 deadly sins” is a pretty good starting point here (never mind the religion), although today they’ve almost become social norms and even values, that’s how far we’ve gone. In a system where the end justifies all means (as the social Machiavellian ‘philosophy’ of Darwinism teaches – ‘Kill, so you won’t be killed!’) kids are growing more and more callous – rivalrous, egocentric, narrow-minded Darwinian savages. We have to learn to separate all of that from the noble emotions and start actively working on ourselves. We have to relearn the morality we’ve almost completely forgotten thanks to the system of school indoctrination, competitive schooling and all-around bombardment with every possible mechanism of suppression and apparatus of brainwashing. This is basically a process of self-discovery. And for that we don’t need any temple or shrine. The whole thing is very simple (even if it may seem complex). Let’s be kind. Let’s not do to others what we don’t want others to do to us. Let’s be the change we want to see in the world! Everything else is pretense and fake posturing – the ego taking the reins. The world will be what we make it. If we can’t help, let’s at least not harm! You know how it goes: “People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it!”
Rockline: Ribnica is considered an underprivileged place, pushed to the margins, away from the center, yet lately I’ve come across new young names such as Chicksy Dicks. Is the music scene in Ribnica waking up, and what does it have to offer music lovers? Are there any tendencies toward more active networking (say, in the praiseworthy direction of the Prekmurje alliance Prekmurje Noise Conspiracy – by the way, what’s your take on them)?
Matej: There’s practically no scene in Ribnica. Besides us there’s Chicksy Dicks (who rehearse in Ljubljana), but we don’t have a single suitable alternative club where things could happen. Our beginnings can actually be tied more to the Kočevje scene (even though we’ve rehearsed in Ribnica from the very start), which back then, with its space in the old Kočevje brass band building, was a truly authentic underground scene – the kind that still suits us best personally to this day. We hung out most with friends from Kočevje, because in Ribnica (at least among our generation) there was nobody who showed even a little initiative and drive to do something together in this direction. And even today Kočevje has many more bands and many more people active in this field. As for Ribnica, the action is limited to one yearly festival, Alternativa (all credit goes to our friend Žiga Lovšin, who founded the project, and to the RŠK crew, who were handed the baton and have been successfully trying for several years now to make sure at least something happens in Ribnica). On top of that, there’s one completely D.I.Y. gig once a year, Štrekafest, plus a few alternative gigs at Gallop Pub. It’s with these gigs, in cooperation with Kovat (Galop Pub) and at his initiative, that we’ll try to strengthen the scene by boosting the club gig action. But it all depends on support, and that’s the main problem here (even more than elsewhere). Without support, a scene can’t exist.
Rockline: The people of Prekmurje, as I hinted at the start, have nevertheless pulled off something almost miraculous despite the region’s financial depression and lack of privilege …
Matej: There are incomparably more alternative people in Prekmurje than here (they’ve got tons of bands alone), and there’s clearly more initiative and desire to actively create. Hats off to the P-N-C collective! It’s great when people join forces like that and actively work toward shared goals. With collective focusing of consciousness, the chances of making things happen are much greater. Everyone has their own ideas and visions, and when it all weaves together, plenty of good things can come out of it. Unity is strength!
Rockline: I don’t like labeling music, because it limits the space for personal growth, development and musical experiments, but I’ll touch on it anyway. Musically you fit into the punk rock field, and I’d add hardcore touches and, importantly, a socially proactive note. Punk rock itself is losing that social edge. Where does your inner element of revolt and resistance come from?
Matej: You know how it goes – when injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty! By watching today’s system and society, it soon becomes clear that something here doesn’t add up. We’ve become a cancer on the planet, and the main reason is the dominance of our false Ego and our separation from nature. Everything is connected to that. Collectively, among all people, vanity leads to segregation and competition. Competition leads to fear and greed. Greed leads to deception and immorality. And immorality is fertile ground for disease – war on our Earth. Our enemy is really not hidden government elites or corrupt political parties, but ourselves! Apathy, passivity, indifference, lethargy, vanity, pathological egoism, compulsive consumerism, obsession with material accumulation, commodity fetishism, infantile narcissism, anthropocentrism, completely devalued hedonism, selective compassion and moral schizophrenia are the diseases of society that we have to cure if we truly want positive change. The whole ‘society’ is thus this fictitious monster – a self-destructive mechanism that traps us in a prison of our own making. But society isn’t ‘everybody else’. Society is us AND everybody else. Each of us carries the key out of this prison. The fictitious monster is therefore not some external manifestation but the collective consciousness of society – an organism that is just an enlarged ‘picture’ of ourselves. And since we’re all just individual facets – mirrors and reflections of this higher organism, it’s high time we looked inward and fixed in ourselves the flaws we see in society. That way, and only that way, will the whole image of this organism change.
Rockline: What are the positions you emphasize as essential for building a better world?
Matej: The positions are crystal clear: Let’s not harm. Let’s be kind. Let’s not do to others what we don’t want others to do to us. Let’s treat others the way we’d like others to treat us. And let that be in our awareness every moment of our lives. Consistency is key here. Let’s make an effort for positive change and not give up! These are simple things. We have to become the change we want to see in the world. We’re the ones who have to change. Shifting this responsibility onto others won’t solve the problem. The main obstacle, of course, is our poor ability to recognize our own flaws (we can only see other people’s) and a system of false values that misleads us. That’s why we have others as mirrors that (knowingly or not) point out those flaws to us. And for that we can only be grateful.
Rockline: I get it, but I’d still like a bit more elaboration and explanation. How does this play out in people themselves, since everyone proceeds primarily from their own first-person position and their relationship with the world and that big “Other”?
Matej: All our relationships have the potential to be a useful experience on our journey, if we just choose it that way. All our relationships have the potential to be good. We just have to decide to learn and learn to see what a given situation is telling us. We have to be able to see what the other person in the relationship wants to teach us. We’re all teachers and we’re all students. Because we’re all one. And we’re all here because we’re looking for love. On the path of self-discovery we draw people, opportunities, experiences and relationships into our lives so that we can learn something from them, and that ‘something’ is becoming a better person. What we learn from our relationships is what we have to work on. We find out where we’re strong and where we’re weak. We learn that we have to be patient and tolerant. We learn how we can help others become the best they can be, so they can help us become the best we can be. All too often we want to change people. But we have to get used to seeing ourselves, seeing what we have to change in us and not what we want others to change in them. We’re here to love. And if we truly love, we’ll learn to accept people as they are, and to help and support them in changing the things they have to change in themselves. And we should always keep in mind that the people who come into our lives come to help change what we ourselves need to change in ourselves. After all, the only person we can change in a relationship is ourselves. Love, patience, tolerance, respect, forgiveness, kindness, honesty, empathy. Sharing selflessly, without a thought about what we’ll get in return. Love is the act of giving. Love isn’t what someone does for us, but what we can do for the other person. In love you can’t be too radical. Let’s respect difference regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or species. Let’s love every single being. Let’s love animals, let’s love nature, let’s love the planet, let’s love the universe. Let’s love everything and everyone. Unconditionally. Then, and only then, will the world change. Let our heart defeat our ego. Let’s know love, let’s know ourselves!
Rockline: What were, or are, your musical foundations? Did you play in other bands before, or is Golliwog the first band, the proto-nuclear core that has held you together since day one?
Matej: Even before we started the band we listened to everything from metal and grunge to punk rock. In ’97 we started meeting up at a rehearsal space and began banging away on instruments together. Basically we were still learning to play. Like every band, at first we played simple songs by various bands, and all of us tried out several instruments, and after a while we kind of anchored ourselves in punk rock waters. In ’98 we started writing our own music and that’s also when we picked the band name Golliwog. The lineup stayed unchanged until the end of 2007, when drummer Jure left us (right after recording the drums for the album Plague Allegiance). His spot was then taken (for a good two years) by longtime friend Emir (Aktivna Propaganda), who toured with us while we spent most of our time producing Plague Allegiance. Emir stayed with us until the end of the summer of 2010. That’s when we took a bit of a break, since for various reasons we all needed some time to ourselves. As it happened, Emir moved to Belgium during that time, so we slowly started looking for a new drummer. The last gig with Emir was in 2011 at the first Punk Rock Holiday, where we shared the stage with the legendary NOFX for the first time. In May 2012, after some kind of chain reaction of ‘coincidences’, Rok got in touch with us, and we clicked very quickly. Considering how hard it is for us to find a quality drummer (especially for this kind of genre and this kind of speed) who moves in similar musical waters and fits the band in character too, it’s a small miracle that he showed up at exactly the right time, right here at home, and on top of that he’s a vegetarian striving for veganism. You’ve got better odds of hitting the lottery! Then again, given that the universal law of attraction works always and everywhere, and that a strong enough focus of similar energy/thought/consciousness always finds its match, it’s not really that strange. “If you really want something and you make the maximum effort for it, the whole universe strains to help you make that wish come true. There’s no obstacle on the way to fulfilling your wishes except you, if you don’t do everything in your power to make it happen.” Obviously the wish on both sides was strong enough that the universe crossed our paths.
Rockline: Which musical idols would you single out as an essential part of your musical DNA?
Matej: There are no idols, just bands that are really awesome to us and have been with us since the beginning, so they’ve influenced us the most (one way or another). Definitely NOFX, Propagandhi, Consumed, SNFU, Good Riddance, Pulley, The Vandals, Frenzal Rhomb, Napalm Death, 7 Seconds, Dead Kennedys, Tragedy, Boney M, and also early Metallica, Slayer, Pestilence and a whole sea of others.
Rockline: Being a socially engaged activist takes your whole self. Some media and organizations brand vegan activists with the label of vegan terrorism. I’m vegan myself, and Gary Yourofsky helped get me there, and I believe more active, less passive action is essential, because that way all of us who think alike can actually be labeled terrorists and a threat. Do you consider yourselves activists, and besides music, are you involved in any groups aimed at a better world? How do you operate?
Matej: Yeah, I totally agree. Without action, things just don’t move. And you’re right – a person’s integrity is extremely important here. The precondition for being an activist is living every moment of your life in line with your principles. Vegan activism is basically a way of life that strives to cause as little suffering as possible (not a type of diet, not a search for utopian ideals, not waving flowers around). It’s about respecting all fellow beings we share the planet with. It’s a fight for a just world, a fight against discrimination and the exploitation of the weaker, a fight against injustice! At first glance it seems these are the views of most people; the problem is just that many of them can’t be consistent enough about it. Among people there’s no real integrity that would ensure we don’t make arbitrary distinctions between equally sentient living beings and then assign the ‘purpose’ of a living, feeling being on that basis. The double standards are more than obvious, to such a degree that this social phenomenon can, without exaggeration, be called mass moral schizophrenia. Many people are already so alienated from animals that they simply forget about them when it comes to these principles (except for the ones they arbitrarily picked and designated ‘house pets’). As if they weren’t sentient beings, as if they were inanimate objects, raw material given to us for use.
Rockline: To sum up, what matters is a vision of the free being of the individual, but with a good dose of responsibility toward oneself and the world around?
Matej: Yes! When we say “Let everyone do what they want – as long as they don’t harm anyone else!” everybody agrees and nods wisely (even though they themselves support the mass killing of innocent beings), since they don’t even count harm to animals, that’s how numb we’ve become toward our fellow beings. People would rather translate that into “Everyone eats whatever they like – don’t force your opinion on me!” and, to top off the absurdity, add: “Live and let live!” In that framing, vegan activism is interpreted as a kind of imposing a personal opinion on others, i.e. ‘harming someone else’ (even though it’s a way of life whose very first priority is not causing harm) and actually as a threat (since it’s a serious threat to entrenched thought patterns, a threat to the status quo), while the endless torture and slaughter of innocent beings stays invisible in numbed hearts (even though this isn’t necessarily about anything more than satisfying selfish human interests (appetite), and even though today there’s an animal-friendly alternative on the market for absolutely every piece of corpse, a.k.a. meat ‘product’).
Rockline: I know that grasping such postulates is a shock for many, but most people deliberately close their eyes to these kinds of truths …
Matej: Yeah, when the truth is too heavy, people would rather shut their eyes to stay ‘safe’ and carry on with their established patterns. Nobody wants to step out of their comfort zone. We’re talking about the mental conflict that arises when an individual’s beliefs or assumptions clash with new information they come into contact with. Research has shown that most people (when faced with new, challenging information) look for ways to preserve their current understanding of the world and reject or avoid new information that contradicts it, or they try by any means to convince themselves that there’s no conflict between the old understanding and the new information at all. This phenomenon is called cognitive dissonance, and it’s basically a categorical denial of the new and a preservation of the status quo, which is quite common in today’s society. Many people scoff as soon as they hear the phrase, but they probably only see themselves in it. Once a person realizes there’s another way of living – one in which we don’t harm animals – they instantly see themselves as a murderer (or the main culprit behind a murder). And it’s incredible how quickly they’ll try, with flimsy excuses and no real arguments, to drag down to their own level even those who don’t eat animals, and insist on telling them they’re murderers too – ‘plants feel pain too!’ and so on. In reality they simply don’t want to stop eating meat and will use any excuse for it. It gets especially obvious if you live vegan, because you deal with these patterns at every step (like it or not, we’re constantly interacting with them). Just by politely declining a hamburger and saying you simply don’t eat meat, an avalanche of ‘cognitive dissonance’ comes down on you, and that’s honestly pretty funny. People consciously defend themselves against the truth. It hurts them too much to see what’s happening to innocent beings, yet they still directly support it themselves, which is close to the definition of insanity. They know it’s wrong, but they do it anyway. For their own benefit, with no thought for others. Too cruel for the eyes, not for the stomach. This conscious ignorance of the individual is more dangerous in today’s society than any enemy. And here I can again point to the problem of pathological egoism, which is so deeply rooted that in most cases a person is no longer even aware of it and will even be offended when they hear something like this about themselves. A world turned upside down. But the phenomenon I’ve described is also an indicator that things are changing – and faster and faster, as the new awareness slowly but steadily seeps into every pore of society. The positive changes in our relationship toward our fellow beings are more visible every day.
Rockline: The exploitation of the world according to the neoliberal formula has also led to a new holocaust, one that happens every day, in plain sight.
Matej: Most of the atrocities humans commit against animals are still well hidden behind carefully guarded walls (of slaughterhouses, circuses, laboratories, pharma companies …). That way people don’t feel responsible for it. As long as they don’t see the suffering it’s fine, but when the cruel truth is revealed, they’d rather close their eyes. We have to realize that animals are the most exploited beings and the biggest victims of today’s capitalist system. Their suffering is invisible to our eyes, and on top of that they’re completely helpless, since they can’t defend themselves. And as long as exploiting and abusing animals remains something socially acceptable and legal, our attitude toward fellow humans won’t change either. And it won’t go that we first change our attitude toward other people; the change will happen first in our attitude toward the weakest link in society. Our attitude, and who we are, always shows in how we treat the weakest. Change will happen when people themselves start changing. When we touch on this topic, the worst thing we can do is ignorance, alienation, withdrawal and non-response – consciously shutting our eyes to the truth. Let’s not think only about how our own rights are being curtailed; let’s think about others too! If we allow anyone’s rights to be curtailed anywhere – and if we even support that ourselves – it’s completely absurd to complain about our own rights being curtailed. Injustice is injustice, whether it happens to one, to thousands or to millions. And we are against injustice! If we don’t want suffering, let’s not create it. Let’s not support the exploitative capitalist machinery that trades in innocent lives and spilled blood! The capitalist system will never respect humans, let alone animals; all it cares about is profit. And as long as we support it, nothing will change, in other areas either. What we give is what we get! How big do the problems have to get before we finally truly wake up? The suffering and exploitation won’t end as long as we keep handing ‘torturers’ money to kill on our behalf.
Rockline: And what about proactivity, your actual activist activity? Where do you get involved and how?
Matej: We’re active in several areas ourselves. First comes ‘direct action’, meaning direct help for animals (rescues, transport, finding new homes …) whenever possible, going to protests, raising people’s awareness through every possible channel, handing out brochures and flyers. We’re also members of a vegan society that was founded last year but has already done a huge amount in this short time – organizing all sorts of protests, lectures and events to raise awareness, setting up a website (http://vegan.si) with all the info about veganism (where we’ll help by presenting the vegan products you can find here (food, drinks, cosmetics, etc.)), translating and publishing books and so on. All of that is thanks to our friends, the volunteers who tear down every wall with heart and strong will (you’re all our true heroes)! We network with friends and various communities working toward the same goal. Things spread very quickly, so there are already quite a few such societies and organizations here that cooperate with each other (Društvo za osvoboditev živali, Lajka – an association for the protection of and help for animals in distress, Slovensko vegansko društvo, various other regional vegan societies, Veganska iniciativa, Veganka – a civic initiative for animal rights, etc.). On top of that, another very effective part of activism is presenting great vegan dishes and recipes (credit for which goes mostly to our excellent cook Saša). So we help out with simple vegan recipes in the ‘vegecore’ section of the punk rock webzine Giljotina (www.giljotina.org/vege-core), as well as on our Facebook profile. And getting the message out and spreading it through music, i.e. through lyrics, plays a big role too. We’re always happy to take part in various benefit events and gigs to help animals and/or people. Likewise, at gigs, besides shirts and CDs, we offer free brochures, magazines and flyers about the benefits of a vegan lifestyle for animals, for people, for the environment and for the whole planet.
Rockline: Can you give the more willing readers some tangible starting points for getting involved?
Matej: If anyone’s interested (info, food, health, recipes, etc.), everyone’s warmly invited – it’s a really great crowd (no empty posturing and none of the bullshitters you find at every turn):
http://vegan.si/, http://www.veganstvo.net/, http://veganska-iniciativa.blogspot.com/, http://veganskakuharija.blogspot.com/, https://www.facebook.com/veganka.si, https://www.facebook.com/veganska.iniciativa, https://www.facebook.com/VeganskoDrustvo, https://www.facebook.com/groups/slovegetarian/, https://www.facebook.com/groups/skrivniveganskirecepti/, https://www.facebook.com/groups/veganskireceptizatankedenarnice/, http://www.osvoboditev-zivali.org/, http://www.lajka.org/
Rockline: Your latest record, The Plague Allegiance, was also met with excellent reviews. The name evokes a pledge of allegiance to the flag, only this time it’s plagued, infected with the spores of the New World Order, which only a few dare to take on. The note you advocate is social activity in the spirit of nonviolent revolution. What positions are you emphasizing this time, and is a reckoning with the NWO actually possible?
Matej: Not only is a reckoning with the psychopathic visionaries of the New World Order possible. The collapse of this twisted vision of the future is inevitable! That handful of megalomaniacal egomaniacs who stand behind it all and pull the strings from the shadows (the hidden government, bankers, megacorporations) is desperate, because their vision is crumbling before their eyes. And that’s because we people are slowly waking up from our half-sleep. Consciousness is steadily rising and the critical mass is very near. This kind of exploitation and oppression of a huge mass of people by a handful of multi-billionaires is only possible through manipulation and mind control. That’s how we’re manipulated into eternal conflict and fighting among ourselves over trivial differences like race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age and religion, in order to divert us from the fact that we’re all on the same ship – a ship that’s sinking fast and will keep sinking until we forget the unimportant differences and prejudices between us, until we start cooperating and helping one another, and until we truly allow and believe in that possibility and finally realize that we’re all One.
Rockline: And the solution is obvious?
Matej: Of course! We have to realize that nobody enables them but ourselves, because we still voluntarily and mindlessly cooperate with the system. They only succeed because we play their game. The moment we stop cooperating with our own enslavement and rise up against it together in a nonviolent way, the system will collapse like a house of cards. But all you hear is fruitless complaining about all sorts of ‘external’ factors, and hardly anyone is ready to do something about it or change something in themselves. The collective self-confidence of society is under constant attack from the media, and that’s the main mechanism of suppression holding us back – as individuals we feel small and therefore powerless. But every individual is part of the whole, and so ALL TOGETHER we form the masses, which means EVERY individual counts! The system stands because we support its foundations. We deceive ourselves, and in a numbed, half-asleep state we still support the exploitation of others for our own good. When we see scenes of cruelty committed against our fellow beings in our name, we’re appalled, but in the very next moment we forget that the product of that cruelty is on our plate. That’s when we don’t want to hear or know that we ourselves are the ‘customers’ for this cruelty. For the sake of our appetite we instantly forget the exploitation carried out in our name and carry on supporting it without a care. We express dissatisfaction only when the problem touches us – when we ourselves suffer. We demand justice only when we feel injustice on our own skin. We don’t think about others; others aren’t that important to us. And that’s still playing their game. A game in which we feed only the Ego.
Rockline: Where can the turning point come that moves the world for the better?
Matej: Within. This is about a state of mind. All of this can end in an instant, if we, as a whole, just want it to and decide it within ourselves. And for that we don’t need any effort or violence. It’s just a conscious decision. A decision for complete non-cooperation with the exploitative system that has been stealing from the poor and giving to the rich – itself (‘the eternal disease of the Ego’) – for centuries. Dissatisfaction or disagreement isn’t expressed through cooperation, it’s expressed through non-cooperation! Complete non-cooperation with all forms of exploitation and contempt (whether it’s directed at people or animals). Nonviolent resistance through a total boycott of elections, a boycott of the media, a boycott of exploitative multicorporations and a boycott of the banking system, behind which stands the hidden elite that actually rules the world (but only because we let them and allow it). We can destroy this whole system in an instant if we stop going into debt and take all our money out of our bank accounts. All the water will drain out of the pool and the monster swimming in it will be left stranded (as long as we have money in physical form, this is still possible). It sounds complicated, but it could be very simple. Many people think these ideas are utopian, but those people just haven’t tried yet. The point is precisely that an individual (regardless of everyone else) decides within themselves for sincere positive change. As long as the stoic philosophy of ‘it’s always been this way, it’ll never be any different’ keeps working, cementing every madness into eternity and allowing no change, there won’t be any change either! Positive thinking doesn’t mean the mindset of passive people with a false optimism of ‘everything will be okay’ who wouldn’t do anything about it themselves and expect others to do it for them, but a longing for positive change in yourself and your surroundings through active contribution. Once consciousness starts to awaken it can’t be stopped, and when a critical mass of aware people is reached, this sincere positive idea floods over everything else like a sea wave. That’s how a new paradigm is born. The old patterns collapse and on the ruins of the old a world is built with new norms and noble values. Nobody but ourselves is going to make this change! And the positions here are clear as day. The greatest wisdom is in simplicity. Love, respect, tolerance, coexistence. Nothing complex. True knowledge is free. It’s encoded in our DNA. Let’s look within and recognize the true power and potential each of us carries inside. Let’s believe in the power of the individual. Find your heart and you’ll find your path. Longing is the key to success.
Rockline: Can you write a bit more about both the red thread of the record and the conceptual foundation behind the extensive accompanying text, which rounds out one of the better-equipped releases in Slovenia into an above-standard whole?
Matej: Plague Allegiance is a concept album that (with its accompanying booklet) lays out in quite some detail several aspects of the biggest conspiracy of our civilization’s time (and all this information is still just the tip of the iceberg). The topic is so vast that it’s hard to say anything short about it without running into categorical denial from most people. There’s too much new information, and it’s too heavy for a person to process in a day, a week … When an individual comes face to face with such a monstrous conspiracy, they’re completely handicapped and can’t believe it really exists. But if we consciously decide to look for the truth, we’ll come to know it (or at least get closer to it). Many roll their eyes at this, but obviously they just can’t observe their surroundings well enough. Things are becoming very obvious now. And that’s exactly the red thread of the album. The whole picture the album Plague Allegiance presents is a political satire of the reality we live in but can’t see beyond our own noses. It’s a story about a prison without bars that we all share, and a story of infidelity and betrayal. We can’t see the true ‘nature’ of reality, because we’ve been deliberately and intentionally molded and indoctrinated into robotized slaves of false values and ideals, into aggressive egoists with no ethical foundation, into determined cogs of a hierarchical parasitic pyramid who only see the payoff. Full of prejudice, confined in a known, settled, boring world. The fundamental cosmic truths and universal laws of the reality we live in are being intentionally hidden from us so that we don’t wake up, because then they’d instantly lose their power over us. And the truth has been spun around its axis so many times that a person quickly gets lost in the confusion of information. The nail that sticks out from the crowd is quickly hammered back down. If not by the repressive state apparatus then by peers – with mockery. Humanism – compassion, consideration, helping the weaker – is even despised. That’s just how the machinery of the Luciferian system of exploitation works. But if you can connect all the dots, step aside and look at things from a different perspective, the whole picture slowly emerges and over time you get used to seeing through the facade painted in front of our eyes. All the knowledge is out there, we just have to know how to get to it (through observing, connecting, filtering information and above all longing for the truth). Every song on the album is a puzzle piece in this whole tapestry and carries a strong message, backed up by the accompanying text in the booklet. Now and then there’s also an element or a track that intentionally breaks things up a bit and lightens the weight of the whole concept.
Rockline: The design side, with a truly extensive booklet, is part of the concept …
Matej: Yeah, besides the music CD we also put out that booklet, which collects important and verifiable information about government corruption, the workings of the hidden government, the secret building of a new world order – a fourth Reich with one world government and a totalitarian regime – and facts about the biggest conspiracy of our civilization’s time. As for the overall execution and concept, we took it as seriously as possible. We got in touch with people (world-famous freedom fighters, conspiracy researchers and authors) and agreed with them on putting out a booklet where each contributed their own part, their own chapter, and we edited it, added some of our own text and connecting text, and put it all together into a logical whole. I can add that all the authors were ready to cooperate right away, based just on a conversation over email and without any demands or copyright.
Rockline: You also reference well-known writers and ideas that were handed to people as fiction, but are now becoming reality.
Matej: That’s right, most of the text in the booklet deals with the twisted vision of the future, with a world of total control by ‘Big Brother’, which (not by chance) was described with startling accuracy in the novel ‘1984’ by George Orwell, a member of the ‘Fabian Society’, where he was invited by his friend Aldous Huxley, author of the novel ‘Brave New World’. Both novels were published as ‘fiction’ but contain more truth than many other novels, since they’re based on a real vision of the future, one that wasn’t planned for 1984 but for a few years later. On top of that, the text in the booklet reveals the deepest aspects of reality and describes in quite some detail the ‘octopus’ with tentacles reaching from the shadow government to the circus-like staging of games in the make-believe political arena, to corporations, banks, media, pharma, the military, the system of school indoctrination … while also calling for a nonviolent revolution and an evolution of consciousness. Some things are written in metaphors (especially the chapter on the arrival of the new consciousness – ships of light and so on), and such things are therefore even harder to bring close to people. Many turn away as soon as they hear the name David Icke or terms like ‘conspiracy theory’, ‘illuminati’ etc. But those are terms that were deliberately popularized in ‘pop culture’ in a way that triggers mockery in a person at the mere mention, with paranoia as the first association. When someone uses the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’, a ‘trigger’ fires in the average listener and they don’t take such topics seriously by default. And that’s exactly why all the mainstream media would always rather stick the ‘conspiracy theorist’ label on conspiracy researchers. But the term is nothing more than a demeaning label for rejecting critical thinking. This isn’t about various ‘conspiracy theories’ or the paranoid delusions of people who see a conspiracy everywhere; it’s about tangible facts and very little theorizing. It’s clear that certain things will seem too impossible to many people and certain views too radical, but that’s just a constant, and here I have to stress that this is only providing information, on the basis of which everyone will form their own opinion. “Just take what resonates with you. Don’t think outside the box, think like there is no box!”
Rockline: How did you go about writing the record? Was the idea first and then the songs, or were the ideas woven into an already built musical body of work?
Matej: I don’t even know how it goes myself. It comes spontaneously. With Plague Allegiance the basic concept was actually set before we started writing. But songs come about in different ways. Sometimes I actually pick up the guitar with the intention of writing a song, but in most cases it’s a moment of inspiration that arrives on its own. Often inspiration also comes while playing around with various riffs. When I start working on a song, connecting different parts that seem cool and fit together, the basic arrangement kind of builds itself (unless a creative block hits, and then it’s best to let the whole thing rest for a while, because you can’t go through a wall with your head). For most songs it starts with a base built on the guitar (unplugged), then rough vocal lines, lyrics (which usually takes the longest), and only later harmonies (vocal and guitar), additional melodies, and last of all changes (if the song doesn’t work the way it should) and finishing touches. It happens more rarely that the lyrics are written first and then set to music and adapted to the song. The main thing is of course strong vocal lines, good melodies and a message. That’s what makes a song. We always finalize every song together, at rehearsal (and in rare cases the last fixes only come in the studio), because that’s the only time you can hear how it actually sounds.
Rockline: Where did you record and how did the recording go?
Matej: We recorded the album Plague Allegiance at Studio na Metelkovi with Rok Podbevšek (same as the first album), and the mastering was done by Janez Križaj at Studio Metro. Recording this record was really long-drawn-out and at times pretty exhausting, though most of the time very relaxed, and in every respect a great experience – mostly because we were all going through very tough moments in our lives back then, so we had quite a few longer breaks during the recording, but in the end we were all very happy with the result. Basically, we first recorded a live demo in the studio so we could analyze the whole thing more easily, and only a few months later did we start recording drums. We recorded all the instruments very quickly. For each instrument we spent only a few days (or nights). Recording the vocals took quite a bit longer, since we wanted it to sound exactly the way it should, and vocals matter a lot there. Music has to have that real, sincere energy and punch for listeners to truly feel it. You don’t hear it as much with the instruments, but with vocals the mood matters big time. What took us the most time was mixing and production. All praise goes to Rok Podbevšek here, because he truly dedicated himself to the project and, even though our wishes were very specific and at many moments way too nitpicky, he was very patient with us. We all put a lot of effort and a huge amount of time into this project, but when you hold the final product in your hands for the first time, all that effort pays off in that very moment. And looking back now, we really had a good time. Sometimes we’d even come to the studio and goof around all day instead of recording, because it somehow didn’t feel like the “right day” for recording. “Let’s go get falafel instead!”
Rockline: Maybe I missed it, but I haven’t come across a single music video promoting the band and your ideas so far. What’s your take on video production and this kind of promotion for bands?
Matej: We somehow never had any special desire to shoot a music video. Especially not for the sake of promotion (at most as a means of spreading the message). If it’s quality video production, that’s the best! Especially if it’s art (by which I mean art in the true sense of the word and with a strong message) and not some million-dollar production with pointless choreography, masquerade and pretending to play guitars. That’s a parody of a video. Sometimes the visual side can really add a lot to the sonic picture and help with understanding the message, but for that to happen the whole thing has to be done in a brilliant way. In most cases a video is shot purely to promote the band and with no artistic value whatsoever. Videos like that are pointless to me personally and at most ruin the music (though of course they still achieve the goal of self-promotion). I don’t think I could name even 20 videos right now that I truly liked and that left such an impression on me that I remembered them because of it. That’s probably also the reason we haven’t thought much about a video yet. If we did get around to shooting one, we’d want a really well-produced piece with a great idea, a strong message and equally quality execution, with no posturing and no acting. We don’t know enough about video production ourselves, and so far we also haven’t come across a person we’d get into this with. But everything comes at the right time. Just now I asked Saša what she thinks about it and she fired back: “We’d love to have a really good video, but we don’t know if anybody could nail what we’re imagining haha”. Besides, we don’t even know where we’d launch it. We’re kind of not compatible with the mainstream media. And on the internet it’s a mayfly. The only thing that might come into consideration is a ‘scene’ video – that real D.I.Y. skatepunk underground scene. The band burns, of course without a stage, folks moshing, skate ramps, skating, falls, madness. All shot D.I.Y. style live, with no scenography and no preparation. In the style of the early ’90s skatepunk scene, preferably with a bit of fish-eye, close-ups, maybe even black and white, and that’s it. Much easier to pull off, and the whole thing can still come out great. The excellent hardcore band Joko Ono did something similar and the result is really great (helped by the fact that they filmed it live at Pumpa (a skate spot in Postojna, which is a perfect location for it) in a fantastic gig atmosphere and with great support from the crowd). Even though it’s not so much about a message there, a video like that is a tribute to the underground scene and carries its own message – the scene is not dead! Check it out, highly recommended!
Rockline: The discographic predecessor of Plague Allegiance was the album More Than Meets D.I.Y.. What changes in content and style have happened since then?
Matej: With the first album, More Than Meets D.I.Y., it was something completely new for us (as for any other band recording a first record). Even though we already had quite a bit of studio experience and demo recordings behind us, this was the first ‘for real’ time. We had a lot of material in stock back then, and the main goal was to record a quality studio album. The criticism was already strongly present, but there was no deeper conceptual connection beyond rebellion against injustice. The visual look of the album (cover, booklet, sleeve) was also made later, when we were already wrapping up the recording, and it’s very minimalist – the exact opposite of Plague Allegiance. Still, the album came out more than great, better than we could even imagine at the time, and right after release it got really excellent reviews, so in the same year we got an offer to release it on the aforementioned Japanese label In-N-Out, which we gladly accepted. With Plague Allegiance we decided to go a step further, and before we even started creating we’d already come up with a concept and visualized the whole look of the album together with a pretty extensive booklet. We felt we had to pass this information and the entire message on, including the call for a nonviolent revolution.
Rockline: Is new material already in the works and when can we expect it (can you reveal any conceptual, content or musical specifics of the new project)?
Matej: If the concept of Plague Allegiance was focused on criticizing the outside world, on corruption and problems – and above all on finding solutions to those problems (especially in the global political arena) – so, focused on injustices that happen outside of us, that others cause us and that we feel ourselves, individuals and society as a collective whole under an exploitative capitalist system, then the criticism of the new album will be exactly the opposite, aimed in a completely different direction – inward, into the inner universe, because what we are is reflected outward. What we give, we get, and we’ve earned it ourselves (both the good and the bad). I’ve said a lot about this in my earlier answers. The criticism will focus on the actions of the individual within this ‘exploited’ society and on the consequences an individual leaves in the world through their actions – what we ourselves cause others, how others feel the consequences of our actions and how we don’t care, right up until we feel the consequences of our careless actions on our own skin. The functioning of society’s collective consciousness will also be under the microscope (but again from a completely opposite viewpoint – not as a victim of exploitation, but from the viewpoint of those we exploit ourselves, from the viewpoint of the helpless victims of our indifference and vanity – especially from the viewpoint of farm animals, the most exploited beings and the biggest victims of the system), where we literally drown in a sea of mass invisible ‘diseases’ of today’s society. In all this, vegan activism itself kind of gets lost and doesn’t need to be emphasized, even though it’s always present, but the issues are much broader, so they’ll be treated that way – from a sociological-psychological perspective. The album will be even more critical, much more self-critical and completely blunt, and above all the goal is to encourage people to think and to (mental) activity, because only that way can we expect positive change in the world!
Rockline: Most recently you shared a stage with NOFX. Which stage collaborations are you especially proud of? Which ones would you gladly make happen?
Matej: Pride isn’t the right word here, but it was a great honor to play with the aforementioned NOFX, with Propagandhi, SNFU, Anti-Flag, SOIA, Snuff… these are all bands we listened to as teenagers and that influenced us strongly (some more, some less), so it’s a really special feeling to share a stage with a band like that. We were also greatly honored to share the stage with Kud Idijoti (R.I.P. Tusta) and with plenty of great local bands. We’d gladly repeat a gig with Propagandhi (maybe we’d even rather go on tour with them, since they’re ideologically kind of the closest to us and also totally ‘down-to-earth’ guys), and also the crazy gigs from the Got Punk II & Resist Fashion tours with friends In-Sane, Harry, Kennybal Smith, Low Value, Backstage … and later with Pigs Parlament, The Mor(r)ons, Final Approach, Growing Rats, Pankeroschi, In The Crossfire, Kreshesh Nepitash, Real Life Version, Spunk On Toast and others. Soon (8 Nov.) we’ve got another gig coming up as part of the new Drunk In Public season – punk rock gigs at Orto Bar in Ljubljana, which our friends Dirty Skunks have been persistently organizing for several years, and with that alone they do a lot to keep the scene alive. Drunk In Public gigs have always been great and we’re happy to take part every time!
Rockline: Golliwog’s stage, gig and festival appearances have been a bit more frequent over the last year than in the past, but I’m still curious whether, besides a more intensive run through Slovenia, you’re planning a trip abroad too, and if so – where and when? What are Golliwog’s short-term and long-term plans for 2014?
Matej: Right now we’re working on new material. If by some miracle we manage to pull it together in 2014, we’ll head out (at least on some short promo tour) across Europe too, maybe even somewhere else. For now we don’t have that in mind yet, but all options are open. First and foremost we play because it makes us happy and because music is a great means of expression and communication for us, and also a very effective valve for releasing the frustrations that build up in each of us in such turbulent times. That’s why we don’t make long-term plans. Everything’s still open. And everything comes at the right time. First the sausage, then the piggy. And piglets anyway! And one big cuddle! 🙂
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