xRISALEx: XVX Hardcore Born Out of Turkey’s Social Upheaval Deliver Furious Intensity on “Weaning Off” (Premiere + Interview)

Rising out of Turkey’s increasing socio-political turmoil, xRisalex is a fresh, Vegan Straight Edge project that is here to establish itself as a household name in the underground scene.

On their debut EP, entitled As The Foundations Burn… (releasing May 14th), these youngsters deliver abrasive assault of authenticity: a mix of crusty, metallic and ‘90s inspired hardcore, with a crystal clear, urgent political voice.

DIY Conspiracy is proud to present “Weaning Off”: a ferocious track that perfectly showcases the characteristics of this record: massive intensity, crusty yet demolishing riffs and straight edge lyrics for you to scream along to. To make it even more punishing, a razor-sharp guest feature by Iron Deficiency’s Mathilde drops like a blade across your ears.

Alongside this second single, there is an in-depth interview about the motives of this band, the social struggles in Turkey and the state of the Turkish hardcore scene.

Thanks for joining me for this interview! First things first: What was the reason and motivation behind creating this band, and how has it evolved since its early days as a one-man band? Was this always supposed to evolve into a full-fledged band or did that opportunity present itself later?

Ozan: Thanks for having us! I first started this project as a one-man band last year, and I never intended it to be a full-fledged band. I just wanted to put out a Straight Edge hardcore demo in a country without a Straight Edge scene.

I wanted to make the music I love where no one else was doing it, so that was my main motivation, I guess. I wrote four songs in like a week during quarantine and then recorded them with the help of my friend Parham, who also played the drums and mixed/mastered the demo.

When I released the demo, the reaction it got was much more than I ever expected so that’s when I knew I had to turn it into a full band. I asked two of my best friends, İrem and Arda—who also happened to be vegan straight edge—to play with me in this band and they were more than into it. We had put out a straight edge zine together before that, so in a way they all came together in this project. I’m glad this is how things turned out honestly.

Arda: For me, the primary motivation was to play hardcore with like-minded people and my best friends. So, when Ozan told us that he wanted xRISALEx to become a full band, the opportunity presented itself to play some politically fuelled hardcore music and make it a collaborative effort.

İrem: Ozan knows the motivation behind the band’s existence best since we weren’t involved in the project when the first demo came out. When the three of us talk there are always a bunch of band / project ideas, “Hey man I want to do His Hero Is Gone meets screamo, wanna play in it?” type of stuff. We’ve always wanted to play together. xRisalex ended up being the one that was realized first, since Ozan had already paved the way with the demo. When he was recording the demo with our friend Parham I didn’t think we would become a full band, but I’m glad it happened.

What are your main musical inspirations and influences? What about lyrical influences, are you more influenced by specific lyricists or by situations that unfold around you?

Arda: Musically, I’m really influenced by His Hero Is Gone. By the time Ozan contacted us to make xRISALEx a full band, Fifteen Counts of Arson was all I’d been listening to at the moment, and I guess it shows in some of the tracks in the EP. Other than that, my all-time influences are Refused, Converge, Skitsystem, Dropdead, Cursed etc. Recently, I’m really influenced by bands like No Omega, Birds In Row, CLEARxCUT, Sect and Alpinist.

Ozan: For this project, my influences include His Hero Is Gone, The Swarm, Morning Again, Racetraitor, xRepentancex, Gather, Trial, Earth Crisis, etc.

There are also some contemporary bands who influenced me to start this project so shout out to Moral Law, xREIGNx, Mortality Rate, Wake Of Humanity, SECT, rotworld, CLEARxCUT, Inclination, and xCauterizex. All these bands also influenced me lyrically and while I’m in a way “emulating” them in my lyrics, I’m also influenced by situations that unfold around me. For example, I wrote the lyrics for one of the songs from our upcoming EP after I had read the statement of a trans woman who first got sexually harassed and then attacked by a man in the neighbourhood she was residing in. The political climate and the cultural context of this country, of course, are huge influences on us and we try to reflect this in our lyrics.

İrem: I haven’t written anything for the EP except the basslines and lyrics for the 4th song. I always thought my style of writing is more indirect and ambiguous than Ozan’s so I was worried it wouldn’t fit in with the band or the genre (which is highly knows-what-it’s-talking-about straightforward), but I don’t think it stands out now.

Would you say there is a political motivation behind this project? What does it mean for you to be a DIY hardcore band, and more specifically in Turkey?

İrem: Of course. I think I’m more interested in the political links this kind of music has rather than creating something totally never done before. We wouldn’t be playing XVX hardcore if politics wasn’t one of our concerns. I haven’t really had the “DIY band in Turkey” experience yet mainly because we don’t connect with other people much due to Covid. But it’s still great seeing people both from and outside Turkey appreciate what we do, having this band and music from the rest of the DIY scene is really a fresh breath at trying times. The DIY band experience must be more or less the same around the world I think, with the main message being “We want to do what we want to independently so no one can interfere in what we say, also we want to be allowed to totally suck at it sometimes”.

Arda: Absolutely. All of us are trying to practice activism in our daily lives and as like-minded individuals playing this niche subgenre of music, our lyrics reflect our ideas in our daily lives in a huge way. The band itself is a platform for us to voice our opinions through our collective efforts in the form of music. On another level, we do hope that our music communicates with other like-minded individuals or even better, it becomes a milestone for people who are not familiar with topics such as animal liberation, LGBTQIA+ rights and/or political struggles of minorities to take direct actions in their lives.

Ozan: Of course, it’s like the biggest motivation behind this band now. What we’re aiming to do with this band is getting our message across to stir up conversations around the topics we sing about, even though the pandemic makes it harder to do so. We also want to enlighten people about the political climate in this country now that we have a broader audience with people outside of Turkey listening to our music, and what we have to say.

Like Arda said, we’re all trying to be as politically active as we can in our daily lives and that shapes the music we make. Being a DIY band in this country is more a necessity than a choice to be honest, with limited access to resources due to economic hardships we all must face. We take pride in this of course, DIY ethics align perfectly with our set of political ideas and we wouldn’t have it any other way even if we could.

Furthermore, what made you want this to be a Vegan Straight Edge project?

Ozan: Well, we all care about these ideas, so it made sense to make this a Vegan Straight Edge project. I was a vegetarian trying to convert to veganism when I first started this band and I finally became one quickly after I started this project, so in a way they nourished each other for me. Putting X’s in the name is a bit corny to be honest, but it’s the kind of corniness I like haha. The lack of Vegan Straight Edge bands (and the absence of a scene) in this country also motivated me to make this a XVX project. I want this band to be a force of change to spread these ideas in the Turkish punk/hardcore scene.

The lyrics of your demo speak clearly: tackling issues from the way our lives are structured socioeconomically to the way we see drugs and animals like mere products to consume, this feels like a staunchly anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, animal, human and earth liberation band, with a radical political message. How integral is that message to this band and why do you feel it is important to have these difficult conversations about the way our world behaves?

Arda: I simply think that all of these issues that you have mentioned are closely related to each other and it would not be just to focus only on one struggle and neglect the rest. While I believe that every effort regards to activism is important, I don’t believe that it makes sense when you become a feminist but not a vegan, a leftist but not a feminist etc. It doesn’t make sense to engage in single sided activism, while neglecting other groups/species who also are subjects of these integrated struggles. It’s really important to be comprehensive when it comes to activism, so it is very important to cover all of the topics that you’ve mentioned as racial justice, feminism, animal liberation and human liberation are all one fight.

İrem: Just being as loud as we can about things that we think matter, I guess. Seeing the world get destroyed and our governments become more fascist every day isn’t something I want to witness passively; I want to do something about it. These songs are just one vehicle to bring these issues forward out of all the things you can do.

Ozan: Well, I think it’s important to have this kind of message because if we don’t have these conversations, who else will? Of course there are a lot of bands, people, organizations, etc. all talking about these serious topics, but what I’m trying to say is that it feels more like an obligation at this point.

Now more specifically about the upcoming debut EP: when did you write As The Foundations Burn…, and was this still a one-man project then?

Arda: We started to write As The Foundations Burn… after we became a band. Ozan and I sent each other riffs, then we composed some songs separately, and we made changes in those songs after we finished the drafts and finalized them. As we are influenced by different bands, the band’s music also evolved in some ways and it made itself more and more clear when we had the finished songs.

What made you choose “Sacrifice / Sacrilege” as the main single? Tell us a bit about the song.

Ozan: Well, we choose that one mainly because we felt like it summarised the overall feeling of the EP. The song is about the Islamic holiday Eid al-Adha that takes place every year in the Islamic calendar, in which people slaughter countless animals in the name of ritualistic sacrifice, a religious practice of the past that is still being carried on today.

We all had to grow up watching streets get covered in body parts and bones of innocent animals. Some of us were even forced by our family elders to watch the killings, which is traumatizing for most children, especially when you consider those were often the animals they had connected to before watching their throats being brutally cut.

While we’re not militant anti-theists who think all religions should be erased, nor are we antagonistic towards any specific one, we recognize the anthropocentric views and practices of said religions to be a huge obstacle on the road to animal liberation. It’s time we leave them in the past and end this suffering.

Arda: I think I literally begged Ozan to release it as the single since I wrote most of the song and I was really excited for people to see the end result of our collaborative efforts since “Sacrifice/Sacrilege” shows it perfectly.

How has the response to the single’s release been this far? I have personally seen a good amount of engagement and I am happy to see you get more attention with it.

İrem: It’s been a couple of days only, but we got some nice comments from people local and international, and we were featured on Unite Asia who are the coolest. We’ll see what people think after the full EP comes out!

From the sound of these new singles, things have really stepped up quite a bit on all fronts: from aggressiveness and intensity to songwriting maturity. What changed in the process of writing this EP in comparison to the Demo?

Ozan: We started writing it quickly after we had become a band. The songs were ready around October last year I think, and we started recording it soon after that. The EP, unlike the demo, is our collective effort and I think you can hear this in the music. From music to lyrics, we all had a saying on everything and that’s one of the things that make this EP beautiful.

İrem: We talked to each other a lot about how the songs should be structured, from gluing riffs together to picking out certain words to put in a song. With Arda joining, I think his crust-y songwriting adds a nice dynamism to the EP. You can sort of tell it’s two different songwriters from the Demo to the EP, and I mean this in a good way.

What made you choose “Weaning Off” as the second single? Tell us a bit about this song.

İrem: “Weaning Off” sounds very straight edge-y and finger point-y with its theme at first, but really I wrote it so that it could be about anything that clouds your judgment. There will always be people in power positions trying to drag you down into something, claiming it offers salvation, but only because there’s something for them in it. Religion or certain types of devotion could easily be turned into such tools. We have the power to realize it, fight corruption on a personal level and question these people’s position, and the true values behind their claims. That’s why it ends in a repeating “What do we have you for if you’re gonna instill disease?”. As for the music, I like the melodic guitar lines in the verses. In terms of vocals, it has Ozan, Mathilde, me plus the gang vocals, so I like how diverse it is too…

Arda: I think one of the reasons is that “Weaning Off” is a very good result of collaboration within the international Hardcore scene and it shows how passionate people can be regardless of the distance. It still amazes me when people ask others that they’d adore them to contribute to their work, and those people bring their heart and passion to that particular piece of art. We really like Iron Deficiency and their cause, so it made us very happy when Mathilde contributed to “Weaning Off”. So yeah, I guess one of the reasons we chose “Weaning Off” as the second single is that it shows how passionate and heartfelt people within our scene can be when it comes to collaboration.

As you said, Mathilde from Lyon’s XVX band Iron Deficiency delivers a few razor-sharp lines on the track, complimenting it in a fantastic way. What made you choose her for it?

Ozan: We all love Iron Deficiency. I can’t stop listening to their EP Vehemence ever since it came out. Since we were working with Guillaume from Youth Authority Records, who also plays in Iron Deficiency, I asked him if we could do it and they accepted it right away, they were also super cool with it. She killed it with her vocal parts and I can’t wait for everybody to hear it. I think it’s important we maintain this sort of connection with people in the hardcore scene all around the world, that was one of the reasons I was drawn into hardcore in the first place. I hope we can play with them someday.

İrem: I’m listening to Iron Deficiency as I’m typing answers! I love that band, her vocal delivery and her part in our song. How many vocalists with different styles the song has really makes it sound like a collective yell.

Last year’s demo has a vicious and raw, yet sometimes melodic feel to it. I personally find that crust influences shine throughout the otherwise pretty primitively metalcore/hardcore oriented songs. Should we expect a similar direction in As The Foundations Burn…? Is there a specific feel musically to this EP or would you say you’re trying to convey different sounds in it?

Arda: I think with As The Foundations Burn…, xRISALEx became more and more abrasive in musical terms, as there are even more fast, dissonant and aggressive songs but somehow, it is more melodic from the demo. Again, I think it is the end result of our different influences merging into a collaborative effort.

Ozan: Well, we tried a lot of different things with this EP. You can hear different styles on different songs, and melody definitely plays a part in this. Especially on the last track, which may be the most melodic track we’ve ever written. But the overall direction of the EP is rather different than the demo I would say, with each track having its own unique feeling. I’m really happy with how this record turned out.

The title As The Foundation Burn… invokes quite vivid imagery, how does that reflect this EP musically and lyrically? Regarding the lyrics, what themes should we expect to hear about? More rallying cries of social and personal revolt?

Arda: It’s a simple theme actually—The EP deals with burning the foundations of our culture which center around racism, sexism, speciesism etc. to the ground and building the foundations of tomorrow from its ashes. There is a desperate tone in the songs since those “foundations” are so integrated into our lives and we can see their traces everywhere around us, wondering if it is possible to get rid of them once and for all.

Ozan: Arda came up with that name actually and we all loved it. We used that line in a song’s lyrics too, and I believe it perfectly reflects what this EP is about: Burning the foundations of this system to the ground, in order to build a better future, or rather, to build a future at all. “In demolishing, we shall build”—a quote Kropotkin attributes to Proudhon in his book “The Conquest of Bread”—summarises what we mean by it perfectly, I believe. So definitely expect more rallying cries of revolt.

İrem: I think of it as a very positive title for a record, and a good summary of the themes of the EP too (thanks Arda). There’s something infinitely hopeful in watching the old way of things go down, as you can make anything from its ashes. It applies to our personal lives on a smaller scale too. What else would hardcore music be if not an attempt to self-express and change things?

That is definitely a great way to put it! How was the recording and engineering process like on this record? Any unusual aspects to it?

Arda: We recorded the EP remotely as me and the rest of the band live in separate cities. While Ozan and İrem took a more DIY approach in the recording process, I had to go to a recording studio since I don’t have any recording equipment.

Ozan: Honestly, I think “Any usual aspects to it?” would be a better question, and the answer would probably be “no” hahaha. As Arda said, we recorded everything remotely, and since we still don’t have a drummer, our friend Piotr in Poland recorded the drums for this EP.

We had to use a lot of DIY methods like recording vocals in a car and tracking bass guitars at our friend Ceyhun’s home, who produced the album. I feel I should give him a shout out here because he basically took care of everything, from recording the bass and vocals with us to editing and mixing/mastering. So without him, I really don’t know what we would do. He did an amazing job with the mixing/mastering too, so even though the whole process was pretty tough for us and we had to do everything DIY style, the EP still sounds pretty good thanks to him.

İrem: Ozan’s “any usual aspects to it” remark makes a great point haha. As I read this question I am realizing I don’t know how most bands record, because a mishmash of DIY techniques for this band is all I’ve been involved in in terms of recording so far. But I guess it’s whatever floats our boat, I think home recording even has its benefits like less stress, changing small bits as you record them and obviously not having to pay a fortune.

This is a project that started within the pandemic, and we’re in a world still deeply in it. How has that affected the way you have functioned and organised yourselves as a hardcore band in a world without shows?

Arda: Due to the pandemic, we couldn’t get together for the recording process; we even couldn’t get together for a proper promo photo, so we had to take our photos separately and gather them by some collage-work. Other than that, we were pretty well organized in terms of recording as it went mostly smooth in general. We wrote the songs separately and simply sent them to each other on the internet for the finalization before the recording.

İrem: It was a lot of frustration not being able to get together for recording or practice and figuring out everything on our own. I am completely “showsick” and dying to play with the band too. With the internet anything is possible though, so the making of the EP was more or less linear with no disasters involved.

As we know too well unfortunately, Turkey has been in a very bad situation especially these recent years, with fascism essentially dominating the country under Erdogan. What is it like being students and politically active youth in such a harsh and hostile environment?

Arda: It’s risky, I would say. There are “codes” in schools and workplaces which are directly targeting the people who take any visible form of direct action—we see examples of people being expelled from their schools just because they are using their rights to protest, we see people who are fired from their jobs just because they post something political in their social media accounts and so on. So it’s a tricky area. Most of us try to maintain a certain level of anonymity because being direct targets doesn’t really help us at all, but we still try to practice our activism through rallies, protests, zines etc.

Ozan: It’s pretty tough here, recently there have been several uprisings because of Erdoğan’s appointment of a puppet rector at Boğaziçi University, one of the most progressive universities in Turkey, and the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, which was very important for preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.

The convention sets comprehensive standards for protecting women against all forms of violence, and the withdrawal is a clear attack on the most basic human rights. There also have been constant targeting of LGBTQIA+ people by the government authorities and Erdoğan himself.

Students all around the country continue to face mass detentions and targeting by the state for speaking up. And they’re now also using the pandemic as an excuse to suppress and push down protests, to disrupt any effort to organize, implementing fascist sanctions in the name of “measures taken to prevent the spreading of the virus”, while of course, not taking any real, effective measures to actually prevent the spreading.

İrem: It really kicks your willpower in the head to wake up every other day to see your country has taken a step back from basic human rights. It’s even a harder blow to be constrained by the pandemic so much: everything is a power tool—including Covid—in the hands of the Turkish government.

Your stability could disappear into thin air just for speaking up against the state. Police are everywhere in major cities looking for people to detain for bullshit reasons. It’s draining to say the least, but I feel that if we don’t do anything to combat it, we won’t be able to at all in the future. It’s also disappointing having to argue with people who support remaining passive—aka just staying at home and doing nothing except condemn it in your head. We as a culture lack the will and organizational skills for a collective uprising that would really make the authorities piss their pants, you know?

What are the biggest threats activists and any form of popular leftist / progressive / anarchist / antifascist / anti-nationalist opposition movements, youth and individuals face?

Ozan: I think it’s the whole cultural structure of this country. While Erdoğan’s government is, so to speak, an Islamo-fascist one demonstrating the worst kind of state oppression, it’s only a symptom of the culture of a country that was built on right-wing, ultra-nationalist, borderline fascist ideals.

The Anti-Terror law for example, which enables the state to arrest and suppress pretty much everyone opposing the government, was made in 1991, long before the Erdoğan’s regime began to take over the country. The whole history of the country is filled with aggressions from the state and state-backed fascist groups against minority groups and left-wing movements. Nationalism is like a widespread disease, the two mainstream political polls are both really bad, so don’t think that people who oppose Erdoğan are necessarily on the good side. Turkey was a semi-colonial country which served the interests of the imperial powers then, and it still is, with Erdoğan implementing neoliberal policies.

Arda: Apart from being expelled from your school/workplace (which is really common) there is always the threat of being targeted by the mass media based on your identity (whether you are a member of LGBTQIA+ community, an anarchist, a feminist activist etc.). As a result, many activists are beaten, harassed, or even murdered by fascist groups. As these fascist groups are mostly backed by the state, being an open target remains to be one of the biggest threats that activists are facing.

I also understand you guys live in different parts of a very culturally and structurally diverse country. How do you see these socio-economic and political situations manifest around you differently in each part of it?

İrem: I spend most of my time in Istanbul, and I see it as an all-consuming, paranoia inducing, dystopian city. A lack of decent infrastructure, class differences and an interest in reducing cultural differences is immediately obvious everywhere you go, even more so when you compare it with smaller cities or areas populated mostly by minorities.

Ozan: The economic situation of the country is getting worse and worse, of course the working class gets affected the most by this as the gap widens and the middle class gradually disappears. People can barely survive on minimum wage anymore.

As we’re all living in big cities, our experiences don’t differ from one another that much though of course some parts of the country, especially eastern cities have to face different realities and people who live there got it much harsher than us with limited access to resources and services such as electricity, transportation, education, healthcare, etc. due to years and years of underdevelopment by the Turkish state. You can also see this by looking at the population statistics by years as the population in bigger cities continue to increase due to people moving from those parts to big cities, especially Istanbul. I can say that we’re pretty privileged by the Turkish standards and in a better position compared to the majority of people living here.

In Turkish actuality, the burning issue of the Kurdish movement, and the radical politics it always brings with it, is very prevalent both within Turkey and outside it (due to Turkish intervention in NE Syria/Rojava etc.). As people from within, how do you see the Kurdish liberation movement manifest in your communities and society at large?

Ozan: While the Kurdish movement has its place in leftist activist circles here with people showing verbal support and so on, it’s nearly impossible to support Kurdish causes directly. And it’s not just the repression from the state, there’s also cultural repression upon which the state relies. There’s a chance that you will be declared a traitor, an enemy of the state and eventually be jailed even if you’re remotely outspoken about such causes. And not only that, the majority of the country will agree that you’re a traitor even if they oppose Erdoğan’s regime.

Racism against Kurds is also mainstream in this country, with systemic racism rooted deeply in the country’s history. Most of the people will claim that they’re not racists, and Turks and Kurds are brothers, but only as long as those Kurds love the country they live in, as long as they respect the flag that has become the symbol of oppression, as long as they let their identities be erased. They’ll also say unspeakable racist things about Kurds and will claim they’re just talking about “bad Kurds” or the Kurdish people that refuse to identify themselves as Turkish.

İrem: The consequences of even speaking up about the topic can be severe, on a personal or community level, so I see it being discussed in private only. A recent example is this: During the Boğaziçi protests, some “harmful documents” were found in the LGBTQIA+ student club office, which were books about the Kurdish movement apparently, and the rector used it to justify the official closing of the club.

Having said all that, how important is international solidarity and attention to what is going on over there? What forms of support do you feel help reinforce the various social resistance movements the most?

İrem: I haven’t seen people outside of Turkey care about Turkey much… even when they do it’s nothing more than posting a statement, which is most of the time the best they can do anyway. I don’t know if other people have seen anything different, maybe I’m just too isolated.

Arda: I think it’s really cool when you see people from different places and backgrounds appreciating your music. For me personally, that was how I got to know people from other places and I’m really glad for it, because I’m not really a social person and I really have a hard time communicating with people or getting to know new ones. So it affects me really positively. In terms of a form of support to reinforce various social movements, I think acknowledging others’ struggles and making those struggles known in your social circle/environment is an effective method. Most of the people we know from the Hardcore scene abroad heard about the Boğaziçi protests from our social media pages and learned about that struggle for example.

Ozan: We feel that international solidarity is really important, that’s why we’re trying to use our platform to spread the word and let people know about what’s going on here as much as we can. I think first and foremost, seeing the support and the solidarity of antifascists worldwide is important to keep the morale of the people fighting in the streets high. Also, I think it’s important to understand the structures and cultures of different countries and leftist/antifascist movements that take place in them in order to understand how the theories we read would apply to different situations. Of course, it’s also important to have international solidarity within the punk and hardcore scenes.

What is the role in all of the above of xRisalex, the Turkish hardcore scene and the values this music carries with it?

İrem: A platform provider, a voice for anyone who wants to express sentiments similar to ours, a reminder that in this hellish century there is nothing more valuable than the ideas and people you value… I hope we do occupy these roles, and it’s not just me overestimating the value of what we do.

Ozan: Unfortunately, we find the punk/hardcore scene here to be rather apolitical most of the time. Of course, there are bands that actively speak out against injustices, individuals who actively participate in activism and most of the scene won’t tolerate any kind of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. But I think we need to do more organizing; we need to be more politically conscious.

With xRISALEx, we aim to do that by sparking conversations and bringing debate to shows in order to reinforce that kind of political atmosphere but it’s not really possible to do that right now due to the pandemic. There are also some people who think being “politically-incorrect” and being offensive as much as they can is a personality trait and “punk as fuck”. Recently there was a project with explicitly sexist and transphobic song names/lyrics and it’s disgusting that these people are still somehow accepted within the scene. We don’t need that kind of ignorance anymore, nor do we need to tolerate this.

Lastly, any plans for the future with this release? What would the next step for xRisalex be?

Arda: Honestly? It was to play gigs and travel to meet new people who are like minded, but at the moment I’m a bit pessimistic about it. We can’t really see face to face due to the pandemic and being apart, and it seems there won’t be any live shows for a good time. So I don’t really know, maybe we can write some new material and hope for the best for live shows.

İrem: If I can be honest, I just want to get my hands on a tape copy and feel proud haha. I don’t think we have the band’s future planned out, not that it’s something we can do anyway. We’ll see where it goes, but I hope where it goes is a bunch of different venues.

Ozan: Yeah, like the others said, playing shows and touring would be good. I never toured outside of Turkey before, so it’s like one of my dreams to do that and I believe we can do that with xRisalex, though obviously not for a while now. We’ll probably write more music and try to release more material in the meantime.

Thank you very much! Anything you would like to add?

Arda: Thank you for your time, your well-crafted questions, and your compassion. It was a great pleasure for us to talk with someone who shares the same compassion for Hardcore and social matters. And for those who are reading this interview, show compassion, have heart, and take care of each other.

Ozan: Thanks for having us for this great interview. Like Arda said, it was indeed a great pleasure, I hope our answers have been satisfying. I want to say what I say on every chance I get: support smaller bands from countries with smaller scenes!

Know that there are people out there giving everything they have into this music and they deserve your attention. We know how it is to feel isolated from the rest of the scene. We struggle a lot to find labels to release our records, to reach out to a broader audience. A lot of bands here experience this, so few bands get lucky enough to actually do that.

I know there are other scenes like that in other parts of the world too, especially in Eastern countries. So your support and attention means a lot, especially in these times. Look beyond the “western bubble” that you may be living in. Also never give up the fight and never stop striving for and imagining a better world.

As The Foundations Burn… releases worldwide on May 14th and on cassette in Europe through Youth Authority Records (France) and Ugly & Proud Records (Bulgaria), in the UK through Wretched Records, and on CD through Bound By Modern Age. Pre-orders have started.

xRISALEx are on: Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp

Source: diyconspiracy.net