Big Duck: Profiles
Ties That Bind
BIND is a coalition of Lion City hardcore’s finest. At BK Coffeehouse, we found out more about the quartet’s story.
BIND is a coalition of Lion City hardcore’s finest. At BK Coffeehouse, we found out more about the quartet’s story.
BIND is a coalition of Lion City hardcore’s finest.
A collective featuring members from Stompin’ Ground, Overthrown and Shortfuse, they bring back the nostalgic sound of hardcore’s pioneers – think Judge, Agnostic Front and Warzone. With 2020’s tail end seeing the release of their ferocious debut EP, State of Mind, they channeled a war cry in the face of hardcore’s shifting sonic landscapes. Produced by underground legend Wong “Ah Boy”, the record was one of Big Duck’s top releases of the year.
Over a few cups of coffee at BK Coffeehouse, we sat down with Ragman, Syed and Jai for a chat about their musical process, personal journeys and thoughts on the local scene.
With a thunderous debut performance at DECLINE, BIND were a force to be reckoned with from the start. In November of 2018, alongside Overthrown and Radigals, they emerged in the shadows of Hallow’s Eve, stunning the audience as part of a lineup organised by House of VANS’ for their “Spirit of DIY” series dedicated to Lion City hardcore. Performing to a crowd made up of both older members of Singapore’s hardcore community, and new school kids brought up on bands like Knocked Loose and Turnstile, a thunderous reaction greeted them as DECLINE’s packed Thursday night crowds moshed on.
“As soon as we started playing, we saw these kids’ reactions to the music, and we saw people going off. It was a two way energy – we were giving, they were receiving, and it just got better. The general confidence changed, and you felt the mood change,” Rag reflected.
With the groups of drunks spilling over their chairs, the roar of traffic and the chaotic revelry of Friday night Boat Quay festivities, BK Eating House may have seemed to be a rather untimely place to conduct an interview. But given BK’s reputation as a post-gig hangout spot and the weekendly epicentre of Singapore’s punks, skaters and numerous underground subcultures, there was no better place we could have thought of. Unbeknownst to the merrymakers around us, the men that sat before us all played pivotal roles in bands active around the formation of Singapore’s underground music scene.
The first to join us was Syed, former bassist of founding hardcore band Stompin’ Ground, and member of notable bands in the S.H.A.R.P/Oi! Scenes, such as the Bois and Rebel Hifi. Next to arrive was Ragman, BIND’s vocalist and frontman. Arriving sporting a pair of Jordans and a Gucci-parodying Gorilla Biscuits long sleeve, he was also a member of the seminal LCHC band ‘Shortfuse’. Having looked just as likely a member of our hip hop scene, we found out it was a genre he told us he could spend just as much time talking about as hardcore. Finally arriving was Jai – an essential worker working full-time as a nurse, he was the band’s guitarist, who’s also been playing in the prominent hardcore outfit Overthrown for over ten years.
The energy from their debut show carried into their second performance held at Play By Ear Studios. “When we got there, we saw a lot of hardcore kids, and we came to realize that a lot of these kids showed up because they wanted to watch us because of the last show [at DECLINE], even though that was like the year before,” Rag recounted. “Put in perspective, we definitely created some type of impact that would make the kids want to come out and watch us again.”
Noting that the current generation of hardcore kids expressed the same level of enthusiasm that crowds expressed back in the scene’s early days, the three are glad that the movement continues to progress like it never stopped. But even with their veteran experience, BIND’s formation had a rocky start. Ultimately, it was persistence and optimism that eventually kickstarted the band – propelling its members back into the world of hardcore. For Rag, the gap was even more prominent.
“The last time I was on stage performing with my own band was maybe 10 or 15 years ago,” Rag reflected. So it's been a relatively long time since I actually performed with my own band. Me, him [Syed] and Jai, we’ve always been hanging out, and we’d always been talking about starting a band.
“It was actually Jai who told me “You know Rag, I think that people like you and Syed have been a part of this hardcore thing for so long – it would be sad if you walked away without doing anything anymore.” I was telling him “Nah man, I don’t think I wanna do it again. I don’t have the time and I don’t think people would give a fuck about us, I mean, who would give a fuck about a bunch of 40 something year-olds playing in a hardcore band?”.
But he convinced me. “That’s where you’re wrong man, you guys can still do this,“ he said. “The missing link was always a drummer. A lot of the times we were talking about starting a band, it didn’t materialise into anything because we didn’t have a drummer.
One day, out of the blue, Jai added the three into a group chat.
“Hey, guys, guess what? I found a drummer, and we can start jamming as soon as possible. He's, like, some white dude from Europe. “And he actually sent me a message on Instagram saying that he’s into hardcore and that he’s looking forward to jamming with people out here”. The drummer turned out to be a Polish national named Art. Back in June or July of 2019, they had their first jamming session, which also doubled as their very first meeting. But as they went through the songs. “I thought: “Woah, there is some magic in this room right now.” I knew right off the bat that this would eventually lead to something else.
After about six studio sessions, they realized they had about six different songs - leading the four to work proactively as a team to record and release the E.P by December that year. “The chemistry was so right. The magic was there - it was everything I was looking for in this band, and I felt so right about it”. As Rag would tell us; “And the magic of these guys is they all went into the studio, and they nailed all six songs in one fucking session. That was phenomenal.
“Standing there, looking at these guys – I was like, holy shit, these motherfuckers are giving me a run for my money, man”.
Going into the philosophy behind the music, they began sharing their formative influences.
The three in BIND began their journey into hardcore around the time of both the local scene’s inception and the genre’s emergence. The records that influenced BIND’s members would be introduced to them through discussions and exchanges at various local hangout spots frequented by the emerging Hardcore punk community. With punk and skater culture sharing a symbiotic relationship, local skateparks became one of the most popular meeting points for scene members to share records, zines and knowledge on hardcore. Likewise, they served as the gateway to BIND’s members into the world of hardcore in their teens.
“To promote our shows, we’d put up posters we hand-drew from hand at hawker centres, just these random places around town. We would hang around the Forum at Orchard and give out tapes to our friends,” Syed would reminisce. As Syed and Ragman found themselves both involved with skater culture and Singapore’s metalhead crowd, their obsession over skater magazines like THRASHER and bands like Metallica and Slayer eventually lead them to articles on various hardcore punk groups.
“I’d be flipping pages, finding out about all these new bands and think: “Wow, this is so cool”. These bands ranged from the likes of crossover-punk and metal bands from Cro-Mags, DRI and Suicidal Tendencies, to more straight-forward outfits such as Misfits, The Dead Kennedys and Circle Jerks.
Jai would also tell us that his early involvement in hardcore and skater culture would become a productive avenue that allowed him to escape the Singaporean gang culture prevalent in areas such as the neighbourhood he grew up in. Time that otherwise may have been spent fighting and getting involved in other kinds of “unsavory activities”, as he would describe, could instead be invested in music.
“A lot of my friends ended up getting sent to boys’ homes or juvenile court, going to jail and stuff. Back in the 90s, I took this opportunity to get into skateboarding and hardcore as a channel to divert myself from all the struggles.”
However, as hardcore’s lyricism and imagery focused notably on social and personal issues, the members personally found the lyrical themes of hardcore punk bands to be more realistic and relevant than many metal bands around at the time – who wrote songs about high fantasy references and shock-value Satanism. Their need for relatable and socially relevant lyrics in the music they listened to lead to their preferences gradually shifting towards hardcore.
All into metal bands the likes of Metallica and Slayer, the three’s journey to hardcore became a natural progression, as these bands all shared punk and hardcore elements. With hardcore’s separation from the elitism and exclusivity harbored by many adjacent subcultures at the time, the three naturally found a place and sense of identity within the scene.
“It gave us a sense of belonging – as teenage kids, I think that's what we all wanted. We all wanted to be a part of something, and hardcore gave us that channel. gave us that platform, and it made us feel like hey, you know what? You can just be your fucking self”. A popular epicenter for hardcore turned out to be TNT Studios - which eventually became the centre of Singapore’s underground scene. Run by producer and musician Wong “Ah Boy”, his welcoming nature and relaxed house rules allowed for the area surrounding the studio to become a hangout spot, and the practice sessions of random bands to become informal, small-scale gigs.
“These guys would be jamming for two hours, and then they’d start playing a whole lot of songs that we're all familiar with. So we’d just get in the room, taking turns grabbing the mic, and start pushing and shoving each other inside the fucking studio. A lot of us were kids – we were you know, like, maybe half the size or what we are right now. But we would easily cramp 20 people in that studio. And we'd just have a lot of fun,” Ragman would reminisce.
These weekly gatherings at TNT eventually led to Ah Boy’s later ventures as a local gig organiser. “Ah Boy saw all this and realised, hey, you know what, why don't we just put up an actual show? Substation was there back then as the go to spot for shows – so we connected the dots, and things just fell in place. That’s how the scene got really huge.”
With Singaporean music’s current lack of infrastructure and lackluster ground level support, he would tell us contrasting stories of massive local shows attended by crowds of 700-1000 people, and how even a bad local show could easily amass a crowd of 200. Singapore’s early independent gigging scene featured spaces that were affordable and accessible for long periods of time, as Ragman would tell us that booking 30 bands a night for a show was an easy feat – with Ah Boy regularly hosting shows that would last well over 12 hours. Listening to Rag describe the state of the scene years ago, his accounts would come as a huge surprise to us.
Here, the three acknowledge the power of community in forming the punk scene’s foundations – with a particular respect for Ah Boy’s role. Single handedly providing his own gear and instruments for multiple gigs, his dedication to the scene brought him to continue pursuing reasonably priced tickets for his events, despite making financial losses at points.
“Then there was us, the fans. Before we started playing in bands, we were fans of all these guys. So you had the crowd, you had the bands, you had the sound guy, you had TNT, and then you had the venue. A lot of it was a mixture of a lot of different people that played their part in starting a movement,” he reflected.
Naturally close friends to Ah Boy for so many years, his expertise in recording punk and extreme music made the recording process a lot smoother for them. “We have this relationship with him. He’s a friend, not just some guy who you pay to record yourself.”
That love for hardcore and the music distills down to the ferocious songs on STATE OF MIND, much of which drew from both 80s New York hardcore to the British street and crust punk movements. Rag’s favorite records include: Youth of Today’s “We’re Not In This Alone”, Judge’s “Bringin’ It Down”, “Age of Quarrel” by Cro Mags, “A Thought Crusade” by No For An Answer and Minor Threat’s “Out of Step”. Rag pointed to his Madball tattoo and gave a shout out to their vocalist, Freddy, as well as early Agnostic Front. Jai’s favorite bands included legendary American groups like Betrayed, Inside Out, Strife, and Warzone. He also mentioned European hardcore bands like Refused and Shield, and cited them as influences for the guitar riffs he’d write. Syed added that Discharge and many of the 80’s punk bands in the UK were a big influence for him.
“The thing is, there are no written rules in hardcore. There are bands that sound super old school, bands that sound metal and bands that sound melodic, and they all have roots in hardcore. But others, like BIND, just like to keep it raw, and go back to the essence of playing fast, aggressive, straight up. No frills, no bullshit, no chip thrills – it’s just hardcore the way it was meant to be”.
“So in that sense, I would say you cater to everybody out there,” Ragman replies.
Hardcore’s lack of elitism and stylistic constraints provides bands with a blank canvas with which they can craft their own individually unique sounds with the musical elements of hardcore adjacent subgenres, and even genres outside of extreme music, at their fingertips. As a result, modern Hardcore gigs often include lineups of bands that sound completely distinct from one-another, despite all the bands unquestionably fitting under the umbrella of the hardcore scene.
This has resulted in many new bands throwing back to older genres and bands, such as Ecostrike and Magnitude throwing back to early 90s straight-edge bands like Earth Crisis, and groups like Mind Force and Dead Heat paying tribute to West-Coast crossover thrash bands like Excel and Cryptic Slaughter. Other outfits find love in the crossover between hardcore and the HM-2 sounds of 80s death metal, such as Mammoth Grinder and Singapore’s own Doldrey. Given the varied creative paths that bands were taking, I asked the guys in BIND about what direction they could see hardcore going in.
“Hardcore’s unique in that sense, because some kids are likely to push the boundaries. There were bands like Burn, Snapcase, Quicksand, Into Another, Shelter. A lot of these guys all came from the hardcore scene, and they kind of pushed the boundaries in a way, right?” However, Ragman would preface that not all bands have followed this format.
BIND’s debut shows and releases would coincide with an influx of newer Lion City Hardcore (LCHC) bands gaining traction in the local scene. Combined with Rag’s re-emergence into music, the ability to share the stage with LCHC’s up-and-coming bands would fuel the excitement he had for the band’s emergence.
“We were able to share the stage with a lot of young and promising bands. It's amazing to see a lot of kids who are so much younger than us still doing whatever we started back in the day, you know? And to see the movement go on progressively like it never stopped”. Given their admiration for the scene’s current proprietors, it would co
It came as no surprise to us that the guys were well up-to-date with the current wave of bands popping in Singapore, namedropping Fuse, Deceased and Doldrey as their favorite local acts, alongside a slew of bands from the local hardcore scene – including Losing End, Rebel Hifi, Weight of the World, A.D and Radigals. In particular, the three give a big shout out to Remnants. Syed also gave a special mention to Darah, as he had known their drummer, Islam Falmi, since he was a child, as he was the son of Stompin’ Ground’s drummer Ayong.
“With his father being in Stompin’ Ground, he used to follow us to most of our jamming sessions. He was really quiet, but he was always there, and Ayong would teach him about drumming. He would usually keep to himself – but now he’s such a fucking good drummer. After Darah put out their E.P, I asked Ayong “Haha are you sure this is your son?”’.
However, the guys in BIND have diverse tastes that go beyond Hardcore, with Ragman mentioning some pretty surprising favourites. I was invited by Nick Wong [of Marijannah and Caulfield Cult fame] to the New Year's Eve show at The Projector”. There, he became fans of Wong’s post-punk outfit, Blood Pact, as well as indie-rock mainstays Subsonic Eye.
“Even with their whole dreamy pop thing, they had the loudest reaction in the room,” Rag reflects on their set. “I was like, wow, this band is something else, and I've been on the lookout for them since”. Noting the band’s shared love for The Smiths (excluding Morrissey of course), his affinity for the local dream-pop legends would correspond with music tastes outside of metal and hardcore. Jai also mentioned his love for pop punk, with his booking agency Reconstrux Bookings having brought in bands like The Story So Far. Noting this, he also gave shoutouts to Singaporean pop punk counterparts in Fader and Iman’s League. Jai also mentioned experimental electronic music duo, .gif as a local favorite of his.
The three all highly admired the new generation of hardcore and Singaporean musicians. “You can see kids born in 1995 or 2002 – some as young as 16 – and their knowledge of 80s hardcore is probably deeper than mine,” Jai reiterates. “Everytime I meet these kids, they’re able to introduce me to all these new bands, and when I talk to them, I can see they’re more knowledgeable than me”.
Reiterating what Rag and Syed had said earlier, the guys believed that the advent of better technology and internet access had a large impact on the current scene, who they believe fully utilise said resources to the best of their abilities. Nevertheless, there were some critiques the three of them had in regards to the current scene.
With positive takes on social and personal issues being trademarks of hardcore punk and straight edge, Hardcore’s earliest waves often promoted inclusivity, clean eating, fitness and spirituality, amongst many other forms of social consciousness. “Unity” A colloquial rallying cry every hardcore punk fan has probably heard more times than they count, found its origins as a trademark in hardcore’s initial age of high energy positivity.
However, it appears that the term may have been more applicable to the original hardcore scene than it is today. According to the three, a hardcore show used to be a welcoming environment for attendees to be involved in a single state of camaraderie, to freely socialise amongst each other. Now, they, and many others, find themselves disheartened by what they perceive as an increasing number of cliques forming amongst the ranks of show attendees, who socialise exclusively amongst themselves and create an unwelcoming environment for newcomers.
“Not trying to sound like a nostalgic fool,” Rag remarks with a laugh. “But that's exactly how I felt when I grew up [experiencing] it first hand. Back then, all of us were like one family, because hardcore was a new, emerging thing. You didn't have to have a crew, you just had to be out there – now, it seems very fragmented.”
Given this, Rag would attribute the advent of the internet and subsequent breakdown of interpersonal communication as a double-edged sword contributing to the disunification of the Hardcore spirit.
“We’d hang out in the streets – that was our meeting place to exchange records and connect with the like-minded. But I guess I can understand it, because it's a whole different generation, and they don't necessarily see things the way we see them,” he’d reflect.
With a perceived increase in violence at shows and “disunity” in various scenes around the world, many enthusiasts fear hardcore’s turn into that which it sought to destroy. Coming from what many would consider to be the more “positive” era of hardcore, we asked them about whether or not they felt that hardcore was heading in a more negative direction, and whether they planned on promoting more supposedly positive ideals in future releases.
The guys all had pretty nuanced views on this question.
When I wrote the songs in STATE OF MIND, I wasn't trying to emphasise the Unity thing too much,” Rag would say. “That's why ‘Memories’ is the only song that talks about that. And I'll leave it at that. Everything else about BIND is what I'm going through as a person today as an adult, as opposed to what I was going through as a kid 30 years ago – because the dynamics have changed,” he stated empathetically, “my life has changed, the world has changed, and a lot of things have changed”.
Contrary to the sentiments of Hardcore’s ‘unity”, Syed had a few musings to note. “It's funny that, even up to this day, we see bands, including some older ones, that talk about unity. To be honest, unity doesn't exist 100%. I think hardcore bands should stop writing songs about unity, cause the fact is just that it’s never gonna happen, - to me, the word unity doesn't only apply to bands or the scene, it applies even to your family, friends, colleagues and a whole spectrum. ” Jai would chip in and say; “The reason why we got into hardcore was because of unity, right? But then again, there can never be 100% unity. After all, everyone’s going to disagree with each other to some capacity.”