By: Annette Hansen
The American south has always maintained a firm grip on its roots and its history. It’s no surprise then that Commander Keen let their own southern roots take center stage on their sophomore full-length Dying in the South. For the punk rock trio, including vocalist and guitarist Blake Marlow, bassist Matt Billings and drummer Zach Ramsey, creating Dying in the South was about expressing southern life in the most honest way possible.
“Some people are really good a writing characters and coming up with these story arcs, but, at least when I write, it’s just kind of observational stuff,” Marlow explains. “We’re in a smallish southern town in Tennessee. I just wanted to take all of that in and project it out through the music, not necessarily in a good or bad way.”
The Cookeville, TN based band released Dying in the South on July 4, 2018 via Trash Dog Records, and since the album’s release, it seems its southern inspirations have not been lost on its listeners.
“I think my favorite part of how this has been received is people get it,” Marlow says. “They’re like ‘oh yeah, this is kind of a southern album’. I mean, it’s in the name and there’s a gargoyle on the front. Maybe it’s kind of browbeaten a little bit, but it’s really nice when people get it.”
Dying in the South is Commander Keen’s second LP, following last year’s What a Waste. With this new album the band maintain their noisy and catchy sound, but this time around the band wanted the album to feel like a true singular piece of art.
“Maybe more so than other albums, EPs that we’ve put out, this is a really cohesive piece,” Marlow describes. “We had a lot of songs ready that we considered but we condensed it down to 11.”
With this album, Marlow says they didn’t want to take any shortcuts, they wanted an album crafted out of genuine hard work, “We just wanted to make a record where if we got in a car crash or something, we would have this as ‘this is the album they made’, and you can tell that we put everything we had into it. We didn’t compromise what we wanted to do and we didn’t cut any corners and we did it right.”
“I feel like no matter where you are, your surroundings kind of influence you,” Marlow states. “I don’t think we would’ve made the same record that we just did if we were in like Salt Lake City or Nevada. I feel like your surroundings influence you a lot and the kind of stuff that you make and you write. I think that kind of all came together into this records. It’s kind of a collection of where we are.”
