By: Jordan Petersen Kamp
Gouge Away is a band in motion. The Florida punk band is currently between records, having released their second album, Burnt Sugar via Deathwish Records, last September. Burnt Sugar expanded on the band’s seething, quick-flame debut, Dies, fraying the edges of their head-on hardcore sound by adding some noise and even a little groove. It’s a jagged album that sounds as physically intensive as tearing up carpet. Gouge Away have toured a lot since its release. Like a lot, a lot. Like 9-out-of-the-10-months-since-the-record-was-released a lot.
To hear drummer Tommy Cantwell talk about it, there isn’t a sense of Gouge Away have any plans of slowing down.
“[We’d like to play] Japan and Australia,”Cantwell said. “[Plus] Southeast Asia we’ve wanted to [play]for a long time,” he said nonchalantly as we spoke on the phone. “We’re trying to go to Mexico soon. That’d be sick.”
No two tours have looked the same for the band in the last year. Gouge Away bears the fruit of a lot of different branches of heavy music’s history, which makes their sound durable— they fit on a tour with the goth, industrial-metal band Daughters just as easily as a tour with the spoken-word, post-hardcore band La Dispute.
Playing with different types of bands puts them in front of different audiences, which requires some adjustment in expectations, according to Cantwell.
“People just didn’t move around at the [instrumental post-rock band]Russian Circles shows… which is weird for us,” he said, contrasting that to playing to the more hardcore-oriented, raucous crowd of a band like Drug Church. “But in a different perspective, it’s like, ‘oh these people are actually just watching us and not being distracted by moving around or whatever.’ So it’s cool in that aspect, because people are really paying attention, but it is harder to tell if they’re into it or not.”
The shape of a show is also dictated by the room it’s in, which has been a constant variable in the band’s tour schedule over the last year.
“It’s weird going from loading in through the back door into an elevator and the green room is upstairs, there’s a barrier, and then the next week we’re playing in front of like 50 people in this tiny DIY space,” Cantwell said. But, as in everything, the band is adaptable. “It’s super sick because it humbles you. You play these big shows sometimes but [DIY shows] are what— this is the cool shit.”
“There’s not many houses that do shows in Florida that I know of. I know Orlando had a kid doing house shows for a minute, but I think he only did, like, two,” Cantwell said. “It’s usually just, like, bars. I feel like a lot of bands do skip touring here because it’s just out of the way and you have to go back through the same place you just came.”
Unlike other regions, there aren’t always tours stopping through that local bands can build a scene around. Even without retreading your steps, touring can feel restricting. Paradoxically, the band’s constant movement in the last year is what threatens to keep them static, according to Cantwell.
“We’ve been trying to write on the road and basically the only chance we get is at soundcheck and it’s only, like, 15 minutes or we don’t even get one,” he said. “It’s a little frustrating sometimes. We can’t really bust all our gear out in the green room with a bunch of people in there.”
But despite the obstacles, the band is committed to expanding the vision and purpose of their art.
“We don’t want to just be a completely different band, but we also don’t want to do the same thing over and over again,” Cantwell said, describing a balance that can be particularly difficult for bands writing emotionally demanding music. “On a personal level it’s hard to be mad all the time or hard to be a certain way all the time, no matter what it is. You want to feel different things and write and express yourself in different ways. We like to try to push ourselves more.”
Gouge Away will be touring the UK this fall with Thrice. Dates and ticket info can be found at gougeaway.com
