KICK OUT THE JAMS: CASEY // Bootleg Skating Games Have The Best Soundtracks

It’s hard to imagine where the modern punk scene would be without the advent of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series.

The iconic video games shaped a whole generation of bratty haired punks, introducing a solid chunk of those amongst us (including this writer) to bands like Refused, The Offspring, Rage Against The Machine and Bodyjar. And c’mon, who could forget belting along to every word of Superman by Goldfinger!? I’d sell my left kidney to see that shit live.

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Casey frontman Tom Weaver wasn’t raised on the Pro Skater games, though. His jam was more on the wavelength of 1999’s much unappreciated Street Sk8er, which, as he explains to Hysteria, was inherited by way of a garbage bag full of pirated PS1 discs. God fucking bless this man.

Street Sk8er was a painfully awkward title that made players trudge over halfpipes and park benches in exchange for points—the Home Brand version of Pro Skater, in a sense—but although its gameplay was terrible, its soundtrack was absolutely mint, featuring acts like H20, All and Less Than Jake, the lattermost of which went on to soundtrack Weaver’s summers in the humid suburbs of South Wales.

Ahead of Casey’s first ever Australian run—supporting Belle Haven on their You, Me And Everything In Between tour—we caught up with Weaver to discuss some of the best jams he discovered via classic video game soundtracks, and some choice LPs that hold a special part in his (notedly nostalgic) heart. We’d recommend plugging some headphones in before tackling this one: you will want to jam the hell out while you read.

Every album on this list came out in either 2003 or 2004—is that where music peaked, in your opinion?
I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s where music peaked, but it’s definitely where my interest in it really opened up. It was around that time in high school—I think like year eight, year nine—that’s when I was really sort of introduced to alternative music and, and when I really opened my eyes to a lot of different genres that weren’t just plain rock.

So do you think nostalgia plays into why these albums in particular are so special for you?
Oh, absolutely. And a couple of them were from video game soundtracks that I was playing quite heavily that I was playing in my youth as well. That’s kind of where my interests really developed—I became very heavily involved in video games around the time that alternative music became a very big part of my life.

1. The Used – The Used

We’re kicking it off on a fucking monolith of bangers right here. What makes this one such a special record for you?
I think it was in year nine, a new kid came to our high school and he was, like, the token goth kid in our class. I was always listening to music, but it was always shit—I was listening to Nickelback and Eminem and all of this mainstream shit that was just easily accessible—but this guy came into our school and he just had this plethora of bands that none of us had ever heard of and had no real access to. He was like, “Oh, have you heard this band, The Used?” And I was just like, “…No?” So the first pirated CD I ever received was The Used’s self-titled record—and when I first heard it, I hated it.

I listened to it and I was like, “This is nonsense! He’s too angry, I can’t understand him!” It wasn’t until a few months later that I went back to it and I was just like… It actually kind of plays into the second album on this list as well, because I went to a show at a local workman’s institute like two miles from my house—it was Funeral For A Friend, a band called Hondo Maclean from South Wales, and a band called The Blackout.

It was around that time that all of my friends were really getting into post-hardcore and that sort of alternative music, and I was like, “Aw, well maybe I should kind of give it another go.” I don’t know whether there was an element of peer pressure to it or whatever, but I kind of… I didn’t force myself to get into it, but I found that the second time around, I was like, “Oh actually, yeah, this is kind of cool!” And then when I listened to Funeral, they were obviously a little bit more melodic than The Used and a lot less abrasive, so I was listening to that a lot, and then I was like, “Fuck it, I’ll give The Used another try.” So that was really my entry into post-hardcore and that spectrum of alternative music.

I feel like this is one of those records that, no matter how old it gets or how far production techniques come, it just never sounds dated.
Absolutely. Bert McCracken has got one of the most unique and insane voices in alternative music. No matter how far they go down their record cycles, his voice has always been a standout characteristic. And not even just on the self-titled record—on In Love And Death, his voice just got even better; and then they put Lies For The Liars out and he just went from strength to strength to strength. Since Artwork came out, I haven’t really gone out of my way to listen to them, but I’ve always kind of picked them up and put them down. They’ve always stayed true to themselves and they developed very maturely, which has always been sick.

How did you feel about The Canyon?
I literally haven’t touched it, but maybe I should after this interview. I’ll be honest: when I got asked to produce this list, I was thinking back and I was like, “Well, what really struck a chord with me in my youth?” And I went back and listened to the self-titled record and I was just like, “Yeah, this is sick! I’ve neglected this for way too long.” Like you were saying, there’s so many bangers on it, but you have the specific regulars that always crop up at alternative club nights—you have like The Taste Of Ink and A Box Of Sharp Objects—the ones that always, always, always come up. But I went back through and listened to the full record, and it’s just insane how good the whole thing is. But yeah, I haven’t tried the new one yet.

2. Funeral For A Friend – Casually Dressed & Deep In Conversation

I feel like everyone that jammed this album as a teen is now a depressed adult, and I don’t know if that’s an insult or not because, like, same.
I mean, for me, this record really brought post-hardcore home. They’re from, like, 45 minutes away from where I live, so I really got to see the rise and rise of post-hardcore and alternative music in South Wales—bands like Funeral For A Friend, Bullet For My Valentine, Kids In Glass Houses and The Blackout—they were all kind of pushing through at about the same time and really giving South Wales a name on the international music scene. And like I said, my first ever like alternative concert was Funeral For A Friend; it was at a venue that’s like ten minutes from my house—I went with all my friends, and it was a concert that will always kind of live with me.

But yeah, [Casually Dressed…] was a record that really kind of put things into perspective for me, and made the idea of playing music more tangible, I guess. Actually seeing them become really prominent and become an important figure in the international community, for me, was such a huge thing. Because until then, most of the bands I’d heard were American—or at the closest, they were from London or whatever—and it never really felt like being successful as a musician was that achievable. So to see a band from such a close proximity doing great things, it was like, “Actually, yeah, this isn’t just a pipe dream; this isn’t just something for people that are above my station. This is something that I have access to and something that I’m capable of.”

So would you say Funeral For A Friend have been much of an influence on your bands?
Definitely my first bands. Liam [Torrance, lead guitar] and I were in our first bands together, and Funeral For A Friend were definitely an influence on that—same as Hondo Maclean and The Blackout, and then bands like A Day To Remember when they were first coming out with their first couple of records and stuff. Victory Records in particular were pushing out a lot of music that was very influential to us at the time. You had those the first two A Day To Remember records, you had Aiden, you had Hawthorne Heights… It was the golden era of post-hardcore.

Did you go to the farewell tour where they played this record and Hours back-to-back?
Yeah, I went to both shows in Cardiff and both shows in London. I was really lucky, actually—I was on tour when tickets went on sale, so obviously I was broke, and I missed out on tickets to the Cardiff shows because they sold out really quickly. But one of our friends was driving Shai Hulud, who were supporting, and he messaged me like, “Am I going to be seeing you at the show today?” And I was just like, “Ah man, I completely missed out on tickets,” and he was like, “Aw, I’ve got you, don’t worry about it.” So I blagged my way into it, but yeah, they were insane! They were so good, like, there was so much crowd interaction—obviously with it being a farewell tour and stuff, that’s to be expected, but you know what I mean. There were probably some of the loudest singalongs I’ve ever heard.

3. Less Than Jake – Anthem

This album is way too underrated! Why is the record any new ska fan needs to check out ASAP?
It wasn’t actually the first Less Than Jake record I listened to… It was whatever album All My Best Friends Are Metalheads, because All My Best Friends Are Metalheads was on a video game—it was like a really low-budget skateboarding game called Street Sk8er. It was on the PlayStation One and it had All My Best Friends Are Metalheads and Sugar In Your Gas Tank by Less Than Jake, and it was the first time that I’d ever heard that kind of stuff—it was the first time I’d ever heard a trumpet in alternative music, for sure!

Street Sk8er was the first time I’d heard H2O as well—they were on there, and there were a couple of other really classic hardcore bands on there as well. I can’t remember why or how I got it. Y’know when you used to get those black bin bags full of pirated PlayStation games? It was just one of the ones that I got in one of those [laughs]. I didn’t get Tony Hawk the year I wanted it, but I had this game, and I was just like, “Ah, I’ll give it a go.” And the game was terrible—it was like completely unplayable—but it had a really good soundtrack! So that was the first time I heard Less Than Jake.

It was the same as it was with The Used—I kind of dipped in and out of them for a bit, and I was like, “Yeah, this is kind of cool, but I’m not sure whether I like it.” I think the thing I liked most about All My Best Friends Are Metalheads was the Victor Lundberg quote at the start of it, which introduces the song, and I was just like, “Yeah, that’s sick! Why don’t more bands do that?” But then Anthem came out, and it was just banger after banger after banger! And the lyrics were so good as well. It was a really, really well-written record—a great social commentary about growing up where they grew up and stuff. It wasn’t just the whole, “I hate my hometown” thing, it was touching on topics like drug addiction and alcoholism and the realities of growing up in Florida, rather than just being like, “Oh my God, I love pizza, I love my best friends, I wanna leave my hometown” and all that kind of shit.

What are the odds we could ever see you chalk up a bit of a side-project and drop a ska record?
I don’t know anyone that plays the trombone or trumpet!

It’s never too late to learn, man!
True, true! I wouldn’t be afraid to do it [laughs].

4. Atreyu – The Curse

Ten-year-old me was fucking terrified by this album, but ten-year-old me was also a little bitch, so I can’t hold that against them. What is it about The Curse that makes you froth at the mouth?
Again, it was one of those Victory Records albums that was coming out at about the same time, and it wasn’t the first album I’d heard by them, but when I really started getting into alternative music, this is the one that stuck with me. My uncle is a big music fan as well—he’s a drummer in a band—and for Christmas one year… I think it must have been Christmas 2003 because I don’t think The Curse was out yet, but he bought me Suicide Notes And Butterfly Kisses on CD, and he was like, “I see you’ve been listening to a lot of that kind of screaming shit, so I got you this, it’s was the heaviest thing I could find in HMV.”

So I put it on, and I was just like, “Woah!” Like I said, I’d been listening to The Used and Funeral For A Friend, so Atreyu was kind of like the next step down into that sort of heavier alternative music. It was the first time that I’d really heard guitar solos and stuff in that type. of genre of music, and the screaming was obviously a lot more prevalent, so it was a little weird at first to hear that. So the first album I heard was Suicide Notes And Butterfly Kisses, but when The Curse came out, it happened to play into a lot of other interests that I had at the time. I was reading a lot of Darren Shan and Adam Rice and that sort of stuff—vampires and werewolves and all of that sort of shit was at the forefront of my interests, and The Curse had a lot of that imagery in it as well, so it really just clicked for me.

And then when A Death-Grip On Yesterday came out, and even Lead Sails Paper Anchor… Atreyu were just one of those bands that kept getting better and better and better, and they’ve written some of my favourite metalcore or post-hardcore albums. I think intro to Bleeding Mascara would have been the first time I’d ever heard sweep picking as well, and I was just like, “What is this!? This is the peak of musical technicality! Like, no-one’s ever gonna be better at the guitar than this guy is.” And then, obviously, I kind of learned how wrong I was—I mean, I watched Meshuggah like two days ago and they were just… Like, yeah, no-one is ever going to compete with that.

Atreyu are the outlier on this list because they’re the only one, so far, that have broken up and then reunited. What’s your take on the whole comeback’ thing?
It kind of depends on how it’s done, to be honest. Because I mean, there have been bands that it happens for a genuine reason and they do make an honest comeback of it. Y’know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Refused is a good example, for me, where they broke up for such a long time, and then they came back and released an album that I felt was incredibly sub par and really didn’t live up to the legacy that they left off from with the album prior to it. I haven’t really been keeping up with Atreyu since they’ve reformed, but it didn’t feel like they were doing it for a fake reason or whatever.

Whereas with Basement as well for example—when they announced they were breaking up, they didn’t say, like, “We’re going on a hiatus,” they said, “We’re breaking up.” So I made an effort to go to all of the final shows in the UK—I think there were like four or five of them, and I went to all of them. And then 18 months later, they came back with a new album. Like, c’mon [laughs]. It felt so disingenuous. But yeah, I mean, I’ve got no problem with it if a band genuinely feels like, “At this point in our lives, we don’t feel like continuing with something,” and then four or five years later, they’re like, “Actually, we want to circle back around and revisit it and see what we can do with it.” That’s cool. It’s fine, y’know—seeing bands that I’ve admired pick things back up is sick.

Bleeding Through is a recent example, whereby I was sort of a fair-weather fan of their earlier material, and then they released this new record and I’ve been super into it. It’s sick—I think they’ve made a really good go of coming back, and they’ve come back with a sound that’s a little bit heavier which is cool.

5. Motion City Soundtrack – I Am The Movie

Do you remember what was going through your head when you heard this LP for the first time?
Again, it’s something that I got into through a video game—My Favourite Accident was on Burnout 3… Again, a video game that had an insane soundtrack on it. I think Funeral For A Friend were on there as well, actually! But yeah, it was just… The lyricism of it was what really drew me into it. Justin Pierre was such a great writer, and [Motion City Soundtrack] were a band that I stuck with for a long, long time. I think Go was the first album they released that I wasn’t really that into. I Am The Movie was my first real step into music that had a heavy lyrical influence, and then when Commit This To Memory came out, it really kind of pushed the envelope with their songwriting. And then again when Even If It Kills Me came out, that was the same.

I think My Dinosaur Life was where I kind of started to be like, “Ehhh”. Y’know, I wasn’t super into some of it, and then some of it, I was like, “This is some of the best stuff I’ve ever heard!” And Justin Pierre is one of those kinds of lyricists that really introduced me to a lot of my vocabulary—he showed me words that I would never think to put into songs, but he would—so that was kind of a big thing for me. And when I think about this album… Because now, I wouldn’t listen to I Am The Movie if I was going to listen to a Motion City Soundtrack album, I’d probably listen to Even If It Kills Me. But when I listen to My Dinosaur Life or Even If It Kills Me, I always kind of work backwards and think, “Oh yeah, this is where it started for me—this is where I really got into this band.

I feel like this record is a real testament to resilience and hard work, considering how fucking great it sounds compared to how little the band had to make this record. As a musician yourself, does the weight of this record being such a DIY effort mean anything to you?
I feel like I’m a real production snob, in that, unless an album is sonically pleasing, I tend to not indulge myself in it too regularly. But there are the odd exceptions, and I do feel like I Am The Movie is one of those where if I really listen to it, I think, “Ah, yeah!” Like you said, it’s a DIY record and it doesn’t sound great, but at the same time, I love it so much and it’s so good that it transcends that obstacle for me, or that prejudice that I occasionally have against music. And there are other records that would be examples of that as well—I think a lot of them are nostalgia based, like From First To Last’s first record, where it doesn’t necessarily sound brilliant, but the music really spoke to me.

It’s never been the case that if Casey put out a record now, we would think, “Oh, we have to sound a million times better than I Am The Movie because we have a budget and Motion City Soundtrack didn’t.” It’s just that they made the best of what they had, and [the end result] just happened to be great. And I’m sure that there are a lot of bands that came out at a similar time and were in a similar situation, and didn’t make such a good effort of it.

What is the worst sounding album that you just have a soft spot for?
My tour manager is whispering in my ear to say the Architects debut album, but I didn’t really get into Architects until Hollow Crown came out, and that album sounds sick [laughs]. There are a few albums where the production on them is probably great, but just because of the style of music, it’s very difficult to listen to—like Nails, where they’re intentionally very abrasive records and very offensive to listen to.

Belle Haven are taking their You, Me And Everything In Between tour across Australia this July with Casey (UK) and Stateside. 

Friday July 6th – Enigma Bar, Adelaide (18+)
w/ Colourblind and Rogue Half

Saturday July 7th – The Evelyn Hotel, Melbourne (18+)
w/ Fever Speak and Reside

Sunday July 8th – Wrangler Studios, Melbourne (AA)
w/ Furious George and Future Static

Wednesday July 11th – Rad Bar, Wollongong (AA)
w/ Whatever Forever

Friday July 13th – Crowbar, Brisbane (18+)
w/ Wildheart and Tired Eyes

Saturday July 14th – Hamilton Station Hotel, Newcastle (18+)
w/ Elk Locker

Sunday July 15th – The Red Rattler, Sydney (AA)
w/ Watchtowers and Oaks

Tickets on sale now from greyscalerecords.oztix.com.au