Bayside

With almost a decade and a half together and several well-received albums to show for it, Bayside are one of punk rock's undisputed greats. With 'Cult' (released through Hopeless Records/UNFD) the current topic of conversation, we chat to frontman Anthony Raneri.

‘Cult’ is due out soon. What was the recording process like for that album?

The recording process was one of the easier ones we’ve had once we got into recording. We recorded it in about 14 days. The writing process, on the other hand, was definitely one of the more difficult ones we’ve had. We spent about two years writing this record.

Any particular reason?

More so than ever we really scrutinised ourselves. We'd never consider a song done until we’d nailed it completely. We just kept questioning, “Is this the very best line?”, “Is this the very best chord?”, “Is this the very best drum beat?”. We’ve always set out to top ourselves. We love the way Bayside sounds, we don’t think we should try and reinvent that, only get better at it. That gets harder and harder to do after 14 years, to keep all the main Bayside characteristics that we love but at the same time come up with a fresh take on it.

For sure. That leads to my next question - the cover art for ‘Cult’ is covered in little symbols that hint to earlier records. With ‘Cult’ were you trying to take a piece from earlier records and combine them, is that the symbolism there?

Definitely. Lyrically, a lot of the record is about legacy, and what we leave behind, that’s what the record is about. So that really goes along with all that - what is our legacy, you know? The record’s a summation of everything we’ve done musically up until now.

I think that lyrical theme comes through really strongly. It seems to be what I perceive to be about mortality and a sort of existential ‘what am I doing here?’ sort of thing.

I became a father while I was writing the record, so that definitely got me thinking about the world from a much bigger scope. Also, my grandfather, my step-father and my step-brother all passed away within the space of about four months, so that made me think a lot about what happens to get to a certain point. My step-father was such a good man, and no one could possibly have anything bad to say about him. My grandfather was a great man, he was a war hero, and you hear all these stories you know? I thought a lot about, how do you get to that point where at your wake nobody has anything bad to say about you, and they really mean it. I thought a lot about not only him but his generation, how I feel like most people have stories like that about their grandfather. You think about these guys who went off and jumped out of airplanes into the middle of a war, or they stormed beaches, jumped off a boat and run towards guys with guns. Is that where our generation is going? Are we becoming those kinds of men? I don’t think so.



The other thing that comes through lyrically is something that I’ve always thought to be a pretty classic Bayside element, on tracks like ‘Pigsty’ that have quite a bit of anger and vitriol to them, is that accurate?