I’m Retarded, You’re Fucking Stupid came out earlier this year and introduced Special Forces 805 to a much wider audience. Looking back at the record now, which parts of it feel most representative of where the band was at when it was written?
special forces because it was the first song we fully made together. It’s got our ethos ingrained in it which is to be yourself no matter what people call you. All
The songs are short, direct and often tackle subjects that could easily become overly serious or heavy. How do you find the balance between saying something meaningful and keeping the music immediate, chaotic and fun?
Our main focus has always been doing this number one to have fun, and number two to talk about issues that we care about. So I feel like the two of those we kind of just do our best to put them together, you know. Tyle
We’re fed up with overly serious beat down hardcore type dudes who think everything is corny all the time and tell people how to “mosh correctly” / gatekeep. So our focus is to stray away from that and make it accessible to everyone. Jose
There’s a strong sense of personality throughout the record. When a new song starts taking shape, does the music usually come first, or does an idea, experience or line of lyrics set everything in motion?
Definitely both of those, it’s a blend for sure. Micah
There’s a few songs where we come in, having an idea for. There’s also a lot of songs where we just like, all right, let’s take a few minutes just to jam something out, and if we end up really fucking with it, then we just try to see if we can expand more onto that. A lot of songs come through just by jamming that we build off of. Tyler
Sigma Ligma was definitely an idea first, while Red Hill and Billionaire Boutique were both jammed out. Jose
“Your Voice” and “Cerebral Ballzy” approach disability and identity from different angles. How much of the songwriting process involves figuring out exactly what needs to be said, as opposed to simply getting the feeling out?
Your Voice for sure was a “this needs to be said” type song. Our scene was just totally run by like indie / shitty alt rock cover bands all the time, and so the whole point was that there’s a lot of fucking shit happening right now and no one’s saying anything about anything. It just felt necessary, especially when we first had our first concert. I distinctly wanted to start with Your Voice because it’s like setting the stage for everything else. Jose
Cerebral Ballsy. That shit was like I heard a joke, someone said, oh, you’ve got cerebral ballsy, and I was like, okay, that’s a fun song idea, and I have all these feelings about being disabled. I express being disabled in Special Forces, but Cerebral Ballsy goes more into how the stroke has affected me specifically, and so then it’s kind of like how Ian McKay wrote Straight Edge, and then had other songs to explain what he meant by it more. So I feel like that was where those lyrics were coming from, especially the Stolen Valor line. “Call me Stolen Valor, but you were to blame” is a way to basically say that a lot of people don’t see me as disabled, but they’re kind of ignorant for saying it I’m faking it or not disabled enough to “count”. Jose
The album title is deliberately confrontational. What conversations did the title create around the band, and was provoking a reaction part of the intention?
That was the entire intention, I didn’t really love it at first but it’s just grown on me because of how confrontational it is and like in your face. Tyler
Yes, that was the total intention. And Reily especially was terrified by it. But now, I mean, I don’t want to speak for y’all, but everyone who comes up to me, at least, says “I had to listen to your album because they were like, ‘What the fuck does that mean?'” Jose
Yeah yeah it was the right move, I was on the fence too, I was like, “No we’re not gonna get famous and no, no one is going to ever really see it, so like, it’s probably fine”. Micah
I hated it at first. I love it now though, The Growlers have listened to it and shouted us out. It’s just how it affects you. I think all of our titles, even our name have the same thing about them. It’s just like how you can interpret special forces. Reily
“Red Hill” takes the band outside the more personal material and into a much wider political and environmental subject. What makes an issue feel important enough to turn into a Special Forces song rather than simply something to talk about?
Why? I think a lot of it was getting inspired by the Dead Kennedys and how they would talk about swept under the rug topics, or things that were happening underneath the surface. So I was like, oh well, maybe I should write one that no one would immediately think to speak about. It’s a very interesting multi-layer issue with land, culture, the military, and how people on the islands have been affected. Jose
Hardcore has always had a connection between music, community and confrontation. What does that relationship look like from inside the Special Forces 805 world, particularly when the songs are dealing with subjects that can divide people?
I actually feel like the community is pretty lovely, even though it looks insane, at the end of the day, everyone just is going feral and unleashing themselves. Reily
The community’s good, and it’s all about unity and loving / supporting each other. I feel like we try to foster that. Micah
The live side of the band has developed its own identity, with El Toro becoming part of the experience. What happens at a Special Forces show that can’t really be captured on a recording?
More passion more energy. Reily
If you come to a special forces show, we’re gonna make you get into it no matter what. Micah
The mentality of the live show for sure is not like oh there’s the band and then there’s the crowd. It’s like one force, one special force haha. Jose
“Live Studio Sessions” gives the songs another life outside the original album recordings. Did performing the material repeatedly change the way the songs felt or revealed anything about them that wasn’t obvious during the original recording?
I mean, one thing about the live recordings, I definitely feel like they had some more old school kind of punk vibe to them, just because of the way that they were recorded. But also, we couldn’t hear Tyler. Jose
Your Voice, for instance, we got a little tired of, but we had really good opportunities too to record those live sessions for free so we were like we might as well just use the opportunity to see if we can make some fun out of it. Tyler
Some of the songs got a little faster. Micah
San Luis Obispo has its own punk and hardcore history, but every local scene has its own personality. What is happening around the band right now that people outside the area probably don’t see?
I’d probably say just how close and meaningful the connections within SLO are. I can go to 10 different shows in LA and none of them will feel nearly as united as the SLO scene, maybe its just a small town thing, but growing up in SB it wasn’t like this over there either. Jose
The band has already established a distinctive sound, visual identity and live world with its first releases. How much of that was intentional from the beginning, and how much has simply developed along the way?
I don’t know if we necessarily intended for this logo to become as big as it has. Like I thought it was just kind of meh when we first made it. I thought it was just to get us by, I didn’t know it would become the main fixture of all of our merchandise. That being said, I think it developed a bit more because of the reception to it, people like that its just a good figure for the band. Tyler
It’s super identifiable and easy to DIY, which is another thing that I was thinking about. Whatever logo we got, my favorite thing is to DIY patches, so having a complex design makes that harder. If we have an easy accessible design than people can basically easily recreate it in their own way. Jose
There’s a lot of room for Special Forces 805 to evolve from here. What are some ideas, sounds or directions that have been sitting in the background that could shape whatever comes next?
It’s gonna be even more badass. It’s gonna be even better quality. It’s gonna be even better songwriting and singing, better guitar and bass, better drums. Its just gonna be better. Reily
What he said. Micah
Don’t want to give too much away but yea we are trying to branch out and not limit ourselves to any one sound. That’s all for now. Jose
