Interview by Kris Peters
This Friday, May 8, California’s legendary iconic band Social Distortion release their eighth studio album, Born To Kill, via Epitaph Records.
Born To Kill is more than the conclusion to a 15-year wait between Social Distortion albums, it’s a revelation: 11 songs of pure, unadulterated rock ’n' roll fury, joy and catharsis, all imbued with the signature blend of defiance and world-weariness that has made founder Mike Ness a poet and sage to the dispossessed for more than 40 years.
The first Social Distortion album since Ness’ recovery from a bout with cancer, Born To Kill brims with aggressive optimism. The album wastes no time letting the listener know where its heart is, with its title track and mission statement dropping nods to Lou Reed (Rock ’n’ Roll Animal gonna come your way!) and Iggy and the Stooges (“The agenda is yeah to Search and Destroy”) and a homage to David Bowie (“It’s a Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide”) following a few songs later on Partners In Crime.
This is a man, a band and a record that wear their influences proudly while creating timeless anthems and ballads that both chart Social Distortion’s path forward and celebrate its storied past: Tonight and The Way Things Were are emotionally charged reminiscences in the vein of classics like Story of My Life from the band’s eponymous 1990 breakthrough and I Was Wrong from 1996’s White Light, White Heat, White Trash, the latter containing a potent distillation of the Social D ethos: "I wrote a song with a stolen riff / If you ain’t got a song you ain’t got shit.”
HEAVY sat down for an interesting chat with Ness about the new album, the history of Social Distortion and much, much more. One of the early questions was about expectation and if he felt any outside pressure due to the length of time since 2011's Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes?
"I mean, a little bit," Ness measured. "I mean, I didn't mean for 15 years to go by, but a lot of things in life came up in the last 15 years. But I did know it was definitely a thought in the forefront of my mind that when it was time to make this record, it couldn't be a sleeper. It needed to be... it needed to get people's attention."
We ask Mike to dive deeper into the musicality on Born To Kill and what he was going for this time around.
"With every record you want to try and reinvent yourself," he replied, pausing to reflect. "But for me it was as simple as just going back to the late 70s and the music I was listening to, just to inspire me. It was a chance to pay homage, if you will, to some of my idols and play around with some different grooves and rhythms. I tried to go back to a little bit more primitive style. Primitive is good (smiles)."
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