Panic Division

It depends on which one you take in first. If you pop in the CD and just take in the sounds before reading anything, you’ll be positive someone switched discs with you for some Time Life ’80s compilation. But if you happen to check the band’s bio before listening, you realize that you’re in the right decade after all.

Meet one of the newest members of The Militia Group’s roster: The Panic Division. The Texas-based band isn’t interested in bringing back the parts of the ’80s others are so keen on in the moment. There’s no hair metal or nu-wave here. Think Mr. Mister if you need a mental bookmark.

With Songs From The Glasshouse, The Panic Division has released an ’80s electronica inspired rock album – a gamble of a sound that just might help set the band apart in today’s overcrowded musical marketplace. In an interview with Stereo Subversion, singer Colton Holliday gave us some rad insights into the new album, totally using fake bass boxes and covering “Broken Wings.”

SSv: I’ve read that you are the one original member of the Panic Division. Is that true?

Colton Holliday: Yeah, it started in high school with me and some other people that were in the band. At this point, it’s just me as the only original standing member. I was going to film school and ran into somebody that used to go to one of my old schools. He was a drummer at the time and said, ‘I heard you play guitar.’ When we first started, everyone made fun of us and called us a Tool rip-off band. We probably were. We didn’t really think we were doing that and weren’t really trying too. But we were a little too Tool.

SSv: What is the San Antonio music scene like?

Holliday: It’s all right. I wouldn’t put it way up there, but it’s good. There’s an established scene of kids, but not quite like you’d see in other states that are more established. I would call it satisfactory. Nothing too crazy out here.

SSv: I’ve read where you mentioned you joined The Militia Group because they knew where you were coming from artistically. What exactly does that mean, and where is it that you’re coming from as artists?

Holliday: The record they signed us off of, Versus, was a record we’d already done as a local band. So when Rory [Felton] at Militia heard it, he knew what kind of sound we were going for. For the most part, very electronica-slash-rock kind of thing, with a dark, ’80s feel to it. We didn’t really try to sound like an ’80s band ever, but everyone kind of told us we did. Whether it was my voice sounding low…we kept getting told we sounded like an ’80s band. And that was my favorite kind of time. I still love ’80s stuff. So on this record, we just took it and ran with it, since we already sounded like it, and I love the ’80s. There’s a ceiling I get from an ’80s song that you just can’t get from anything else.

SSv: When you say a different ceiling, what do you mean by that?

Holliday: I guess what I’m referring to is because I grew up in the ’80s, maybe it reminds me of that. I guess if I grew up in the ’90s, I’d be talking about stuff I wouldn’t want to talk about, like Gin Blossoms.

SSv: You said they knew what you were wanting to do artistically-a kind of meshing of the electronica with rock elements. But at the same time, Versus was a lot heavier than Glasshouse. Was there discussion about “let’s bring this down a bit?”

Holliday: Versus had been out for two years before Militia picked it up. We’re three to four years out of that record, so you can imagine how different we were four years ago. By the time we put that record out, we were kinda like, ‘Wow, we already grew out of the record.’ That was our entry into the music scene, our entry CD. It wasn’t us yet. We were trying to go for something. We were still more of a rock band, and we were trying to go for something heavier and trying to incorporate electronics a lot.

On Versus, it’s more of an afterthought rather than an actual part of the music. Basically on Versus, when we got the mix done, they were too lost in the mix. There are days now when I listen to Versus and will hear a sample and think that was a sweet sample – why did we mess that up?

SSv: Do you feel like you missed an opportunity with that album, or do you feel like you just grew from that?

Holliday: No, I think it was good for the time, or at least for the first album. It’s definitely high and above that right now. This time around with Glasshouse, that’s the reason we called it Songs from the Glasshouse. There was a lot of talk about what we weren’t going to do anymore: very simple things, like we’re not heavy anymore. And I didn’t really have to say that, because none of us really wanted to be. It’d been almost four years, and all of us did not want to have to go there.

One of the main things is I did not want to be categorized in any kind of emo or emo-core or any kind of hard-core scene. That’s not what we’re going for. I want to mix stuff like ’90s techno and ’80s together, but we’re rock. I’m going to stop playing so many leads on my guitar and I’m going to back off more and not play so much. I want to let my stuff get buried in the mix to compensate for bringing the electronic stuff out. Because mixing our album will give you a brain tumor. We have so many tracks going on.

SSv: How many tracks do you have?

Holliday: I don’t know. After the drums are already down, you stack the rhythm guitar three or four times, you’ve got a lead on top of that, which could have a harmony lead on it. And on top of all this, the lead has reverb delay. The drums have some reverb. On top of that, we’ve got these massive samples that already take up a whole mix on their own, which also have some reverb and delay. I think we’re still working on a way to perfectly record what we do.

SSv: People were telling you that you sounded like an ’80s band. You said you just wanted to run with it, but you can’t run with it much more than remaking “Broken Wings,” the essential ’80s ballad.

Holliday: Most people are saying it was a good thing that we sounded just like the original. We had some people saying it was so much like the original that they had to go and check if it was the original.

SSv: Vocally, you sound different, but musically it sounds very much the same.

Holliday: We went into it wanting to do that, because there are so many bands that will cover a song and say ‘Let’s do it our way, as if we wrote the song.’ I think that just makes it easier. With this song, it’s from the ’80s, and it’s a one-hit wonder. It’s not like we worship Mr. Mister or anything. But I thought it would be way more fun and challenging to try and totally match the old song the way it was in the ’80s. We’d use stuff they’d use in the ’80s and try to see how close we could get it to the original. Obviously, we’d still have our own sound to it. But we went as far as to say we were really trying to match the way it sounds.

The whole song has fake bass on it, just the way all the ’80s songs do. We used the actual bass box, this really, piece-of-crap ’80s bass box hooked into a keyboard. The other person who produced the record with me, who recorded our album, he was in the ’80s, full-blown. He’s older than us, so he recorded in the ’80s and has a unit with this cheesy bass on it. And I said, ‘That’s what we need, because all of those songs have that.’ There’s a bell sound that almost every ’80s band tried to use, so we mixed that.

So we really tried to match it as closely as possible, because I thought that would be a lot harder-at least for most bands in our genre. It’s a lot easier than us just saying, ‘Let’s put a punk beat over it.’ Or, ‘Let’s play four power chords and scream sometimes.’ We didn’t totally crap on the song, which would be a lot easier.

SSv: When you’re telling your producer that you want him to pull out all that equipment from two decades ago, does he laugh at first? When was the last time he used that?

Holliday: I said, ‘Well, we need fake bass.’ He was like, ‘Dude. I’ve got this thing. Let me try this.’ It’s looks like if you went to a pawn shop right now, you’d find this-it’s straight out of a pawn shop. The fake bass sound is horrible on its own, but when you put it in a mix, you don’t hear how cheesy it sounds, but the bass frequencies are just really nice. The next record that I’m going to do as a side record, an electronica record, I might use fake bass all over the whole thing. I think it sounds good.

SSv: Did he say the last time he’d even used that box?

Holliday: Oh, who knows. Probably back in ‘85 when he was wearing, like, vests.

SSv: You mentioned you’re going to film school and you directed the music video. Is that important to you to be able to have that outlet? How does that work?

Holliday: I’m definitely involved in a lot of stuff for the band. I don’t need to be the arrogant guy that tries to control everything, but that’s just kind of the way it’s been from the beginning. Our band’s more of a do-it-yourself band at this point, for various reasons, because we want to be involved in the direction and the way we sound-our artwork. And on top of that, if you don’t have a big budget for certain things, it’s up to you to do it yourself.

So we had to figure out what kind of music we had-what we were going to do for a video, what song. You know, there’s not much to do on tour when you’re driving for eight hours, ten hours a day. I came up with this idea and I called Daniel Isaac, who did our other videos. And I told him the idea and that I wanted to direct it with him, and he was all about it. So we talked about it for months and months, and finally, I went and shot it.

SSv: If you’re such a DIY band, how do you chart the course ahead to get the word out about Songs From The Glasshouse? Is there a niche that you can fill out there as you begin to publicize?

Holliday; Obviously, we want to be touring this time around with more bands that are close to our genre. A lot of tours… we’ve got a lot of great friends, but they weren’t necessarily like our music. We were on a lot of hardcore tours that we were handed at that time. We don’t really fit into a genre, and it kind of hurts us when it comes down to matching bands for touring. And great tours are a big thing for us. That’s really what we’re trying to do it to get better tours that match us, and obviously bigger ones.

As far as marketing and promotions, it’s really the same thing – hopefully more this time. It’s definitely a risk to take, as far as kids are concerned, especially with kids that were into Versus. It’s such a different album, and I think it appeals to a little bit of an older crowd now. And so it’s kind of hard. We see what kids are into… the main demographic of kids that are buying CDs, aren’t really into our style of music. So it’s a risk, and we’ll have to see what happens. Hopefully it’ll inspire kids, and the kids will learn from it.

SSv: Is that a risk that you think is definitely worth taking?

Holliday: Oh, yeah! Of course! If I was in it for the money, I’d be doing film right now or something. It’s definitely not about the money for us. We went into the album saying, ‘Let’s write this album as if we’re breaking up. Let’s only write it the way we want to write it. Screw everybody else or what the kids are gonna think of it, if they’re going to understand it. Or if the label is not going to like it… or anybody is not going to like it. Let’s just make an album that we want to make.’

No related posts.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.