Bane

The Note (Equal Vision)
by Scott Hefflon

Aaron Dalbec was in hardcore bands even before he was my roommate 12 years ago cuz I was buds with his older brother, back when I first started the mag. He still owes me a few hundred for bills, too. Heh. We had a running joke… He used to help with the paste-up, back when ads were laser prints and we rubber cemented them to the boards. He’d take the straight-edge ruler to cut around some ads, and I’d need to it back to cut up some too. I’d say “straight-edge” meaning “can ya hand me the straight-edge ruler?” and he’d say “Here” or “That’s me.” Oh, how we’d laugh! That stayed funny for a couple years, because when yer doing paste up – the last step before the mag goes to press, usually with the guy waiting to pick up the boards sitting there, waiting for ’em – anything not involving cutting and pasting is appreciated.

Aaron might or might not still be straight-edge. He still plays hardcore. I still run a rock mag. Both of us have seen far too much in life, and we still do what we do, as trends come and go, because it’s what we do. I’ve never really cared much for most of Bane‘s songs, but they sometimes surprise me. Like the end of “Swan Song,” the part with the group shouts and a vocal cameo by someone with a voice far better than the other Aaron, the singer. But it’s “clean singing” like those pesky metal bands do. Not hardcore, drooping the last word in every sentence. That’s probably why I like that part best. Surely a crowd-pleaser. You can just see all the hardcore kids swaying in unity. They don’t smoke, so they wouldn’t have lighters to wave, and we can’t do that in clubs since the Great White tragedy anyway. Wave your water bottles or something…
(www.equalvision.com)