Florida melodic punk institution Hot Water Music have raised spirits and gotten fists in the air, off and on, since 1993. Despite a number of hiatuses over the years and what seemed like an outright breakup in 2006, the band is back with their uplifting melodic punk/hardcore sound and a new album, which raises the question of how these four individuals have managed to keep their music so positive over the years.
“Well, I guess the alternative is a pretty big bum-out,” says bassist Jason Black. “I mean, nobody’s life is easy. Everyone has a lot of hard stuff to deal with all of the time. It works for some bands to kind of get stuck in that, and dwell on it, but it doesn’t work for us.”
Riding high off their new album, Exister, the band has enjoyed being back together and doing their thing: a raucous combo of punk-rock integrity and hardcore intensity, all put through the filter of spirit-raising and good vibes (lots of songs about following your dream, seeing the bright side, plowing onward, etc.).
Strangely enough, despite doing individual projects for the past six years, there wasn’t much of an adjustment period when the four members got back together.
“Yeah, not really, which is kind of weird,” says Black. “I think we all expected some adjustments, but it just sort of went well, and nobody really knew what to expect, and it was nice and easy.”
But it hasn’t been easy for the band or their fans over the course of their career. Just when they would gain momentum, the band would announce a hiatus and the four members would go their separate ways. It’s reached a point now, according to Black, that they are probably better off just saying there will always be a Hot Water Music and just do the band whenever they have the time.
“That’s sort of the plan at this point,” he says. “It would feel a little repetitive if we went through the whole hiatus thing again. It’s hard: you’ve got four people and everyone has different agendas and different mind frames and are at different points in their life, so it’s not always easy to come to a consensus on the band’s general state of affairs. But at this point we’ve gotten it dialed pretty good.”
Taking a six-year break from the kind of band who influenced a whole generation of bands could be potentially disastrous. A lot can change in a musical subgenre like melodic punk rock in the better part of a decade. But, in the case of Hot Water Music, the break just re-energized the band’s creative juices.
“Everyone’s fresh, you know,” says Black, “it’s really easy to get stuck in a repetitive cycle of record, tour, record, tour, record, tour and you can lose perspective really quickly. It’s good to have a fresh set of eyes on everything and really appreciate it.”
Never known as being a soapbox punk band, Hot Water Music are content to let their listeners figure out their own song interpretations, something that’s still important to them to this day, according to Black.
“It’s very important. We get asked all of the time where we stand on politics and I can safely say that no one’s voting for Mitt Romney in the band,” he laughs, “but we’ve always been more about the music and the vibe than a message. The music sort of is the message, as cheesy as that may be.”
Hot Water Music (with Rise Against and Gaslight Anthem)
Thursday, October 4
Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre, $29.50-$43
sofmc.com/events