By COURTNEY GUTTENBERG
Staff Writer
Hardcore punk is a large part of the Albany music scene, and I was lucky enough to be able to sit down with all of the members of Open Casket Division, an emerging hardcore punk band who just recently put out their first EP. The band is made up of Nicholas DeOrio (vocals), Kyle Pipino (guitar), Jon Carroll (bass), and Neil Schneider (drums). OCD hails from upstate New York, close to the Troy area, and they were founded in July 2014 by DeOrio. I got to talk to all four of the guys and talk about their new material, their love of music and what the future holds for them.
Q: How did you all meet?
PIPINO: Long story short, Neil and I met each other and have been in bands together for years. Our other band kind of ended, but we continued to work with each other and then eventually we came to the crossroads of Nick.
DEORIO: When I was in high school, I met Jon through Votec trade classes. We were both in the culinary program together. We were kind of friends after that, but then his other band and the band that I used to be in started playing a lot of shows together. I met Kyle and Neil just through going to shows, but in February 2014, Kyle approached me at my old band’s last show and said “We should get together and make music sometime.” At the time, I didn’t really think that much about it, but when it came time for Open Casket Division needing a new guitar player, I hit him up instantly. When we needed a drummer, he contacted Neil.
Q: What made you want to start a band or be in a band, generally as a group and also individually?
PIPINO: We came together as a band through circumstance and I think we’re actually going to go really far with this version of OCD. We wanted to be together as a band, all of us together.
DEORIO: Like I said before, Kyle approached me about two years ago and asked me to be in a band with him, so that’s kind of what inspired that. But when my old band played all these shows with Jon’s other band, that’s when I was like, “oh, damn, he’s a pretty good musician, I should try to get together and collaborate with him sometime.” Initially, what made me want to be in a band, was when I was 15 and saw Madball at Valentine’s. Being that young and not knowing anybody who went to shows at the time kind of opened the door and made me feel a little bit more welcome to hardcore and hardcore punk, etcetera.
SCHNEIDER: I’ve been into music ever since I was like, 4 years old and being like “Wow! Music’s awesome! And I wanna be in a band!” At the age of 9, I was listening to death metal bands and stuff like that. The first band I technically joined was with Kyle when we were 15. Ever since then, I just haven’t stopped. It’s just been a part of me since I’ve been alive.
CARROLL: I wanted to be in a band back when I was in middle school. Me and my friends after school, after detention for doing things that weren’t school related, we would just go home and blast Linkin Park and just sing along. We’d all just plan it out and one day, it just happened. The first band I joined was a lot of my close friends, a lot of the friends we talked about being in like, a Linkin Park style band with. They needed a bassist, I happened to play bass. But other than that, I grew up as a kid, just like Neil said, just loving music. Any CD I found anywhere, I would get my hands on it and grab it and blast it in my stereo.
Q: Where’d you get your band name from and what does it mean?
DEORIO: I was driving on the highway one day and I was trying to think of an individual band name, thinking that “it has to be something that stands out.” I just looked up and there was a truck and the back of it read “The Casket Division.” I was like, “Well, I guess we’ll be The Casket Division.” But then, there was this guy I used to hang out with who was like, “It should totally be OCD.” So then I was like, “Well, Open Casket Division makes sense.”
PIPINO: You can find any sort of meaning in it, I think. We have a lot of songs that are kind of alluding to dying young and living as fast as you can because you only have one life and for some reason Open Casket Division speaks that to me.
Q: What drove you guys to wanting to play your band’s specific genre?
CARROLL: I think that’s how we met, actually. From my understanding it started with Nick having a little bit of inspiration to write one song this way and another song this way, and when kind of just showed it to everyone else that’s currently in this band now, everyone loved what they heard. Speaking for myself at least, we all just kind of jumped on board.
PIPINO: The way the band is now, I think I was the first guy out of this formation to talk with Nick about it. In January of 2015, Nick said, “Hey, listen, I have this EP I recorded. It’s like, punk, and I need you to come down and listen to it.” mHe’s in Schenectady, he’s like 40 minutes away from me and I’m not usually a guy to do that. But I was like, I enjoy Nick, I respect Nick, I like his passion and I need to go check it out. When I checked it out, it was literally an amalgam of everything that, in my eyes, is great about hardcore punk, and making it into something new. I’ve been in a lot of different types of bands and in this band, the music is great but so is the attitude. When we play live, it gets something animalistic out of me that a metal band couldn’t do.
DEORIO: I think another thing about this new formation of people is that I feel like they all bring something new to the table. With Kyle and Neil, I feel like they bring a more aggressive sense of music to it. They inspire me to take things up a notch. Sitting in the car and having conversations with Jon about the style of music that we like, he kind of makes me want to be like, emotionally driven with music, so more melodic stuff. It’s more about taking it to a new emotional level. We’re not just playing hardcore punk anymore, we’re playing math style rock and emotionally driven rock music. We’re also still holding to the hardcore and punk roots we have together.
SCHNEIDER: And black metal!
DEORIO: And black metal.
Q: What are your main influences as a band?
SCHNEIDER: I’d say we all bring a different influence to the band. I’ve never been huge into hardcore music, I’ve always been into black metal and death metal. Where my influences come from mostly metal, Nick is very hardcore driven. Kyle is very metal-ish. Our influences are so wide, it isn’t like one true influence that we have.
Q: Well, what would you say your biggest individual influences are?
SCHNEIDER: I guess I’ll go back to black metal. I really do love black metal. Pop-punk and punk, too, I’ve always been a huge fan of punk since I was a kid. My brother got me into a lot of skate punk, like NOFX and Lagwagon. I thought it would always been fun to be in a punk band, which is why this is cool. We can add a bunch of different styles and make what we are.
CARROLL: I would say a lot of 90s nu-metal. Some bands including System of a Down, Korn, Slipknot, Incubus… that’s where a lot of my core came from. As I met and jammed with a lot of different musicians, I was open-minded to the styles that influenced them.
PIPINO: Me and Jon have that same kind of thing, we bond over System all the time. I’m all over the place. My philosophy is there is only good and bad music, there are no genres. I’ll listen to anything. I can’t just have one style of music to listen to.
DEORIO: I don’t think I could put exactly one band as my reason for playing hardcore punk. Like I said, I saw Madball years ago, but also, as I previously mentioned, I love adding emo music into the mix, which has given me the inspiration to add a few hidden melodies underneath all the loud riffs. I love ‘70s progressive rock, because it really adds an interesting touchtone to whatever notes are coming out of the amp. ‘90s alternative rock, with grunge and what not, adds its own style to aggression to that when I’m playing negative, violent music. It’s the different eras and what they contributed to music as well to what I can add to my music to keep it fresh and interesting.
PIPINO: If there’s anything to prove that our music is “fresh,” it’s that we don’t even have one band that we could all say [is our main influence]… we have some artists, but we’re just all over the place and we make this music pie with different ingredients from everybody, and it’s pretty awesome.
Q: What are your biggest goals as a band?
DEORIO: My personal goal with this band is to reach a level of success where — touring sounds like fun, getting signed to a record label sounds like fun, but to reach a level of regional success, and to be able to play my personal favorite venue in the entire world which is Webster Hall in New York City. That place is really cool.
PIPINO: To put out great f*cking music, is the bottom line with me and any project. We have an EP we’re writing right now that is the continuation of “Nothing Is Set In Stone,” and then we have plans for future things as well. I want to go around playing shows just like these guys want to do. I want to do touring, I want to do more interviews and more press. I just think we all have a mutual goal about going as far as we can.
CARROLL: I’d say I’m all for touring and playing new places, and just doing stuff like this [interview]. I’d say writing it, people finding out about it, listening to it, and playing it. I like spreading this infinite feeling of music all together and playing it live.
SCHNEIDER: And if someone ever made a dank meme out of us, that would be cool too.
Q: What’s the biggest goal or goals you guys have already accomplished as a band?
DEORIO: We played a show with The Misfits once.
PIPINO: That was cool.
DEORIO: That was all four of us too. That was Jon’s first show with us, too. That right there is awesome. One time we had a bunch of our friends come to a show we played at our practice space and after that we threw a party, so those two things right there. That was it.
PIPINO: I’ve never had an experience like we had at that Misfits show. The punks know how to welcome a band that nobody knows. They’re really respectful and there’s so many people that showed up before anything happened. That doesn’t happen. We had a great crowd and there were so many great bands. We also played a house show in my apartment. House shows are where it’s at, and if you know any, hit us up!
DEORIO: Yes, we’d love to play your basement or your garage or your shed.
SCHNEIDER: Yeah, hit us up on MySpace.
CARROLL: Yeah, that Misfits show was definitely spot on. What I loved so much about that show was also how many people snatched the EP. We had people ask all of us to sign the EP. Other than that, I just think that it’s awesome to play out of the home town, because you’re going into a new city and you don’t know anyone from there and they’re all giving you a chance.
Q: Since you’re playing in Syracuse on April 16, how does it feel to play shows outside of Albany?
DEORIO: The coolest part about playing Syracuse on this show is that we’re playing with a very well known Syracuse hardcore band called Ego Destroys. They’ve played here several times, and they’re definitely going to draw a great crowd in their home city. To be able to play with that band is going to bring people out. It’s very cool that we get to share the stage with one of Syracuse’s contemporary legends. Another cool thing about that show is that the show is a benefit for cats, so to be able to help a cause like that is a really good feeling. Driving two hours away to play a show for people we don’t know is an exhilarating feeling.
PIPINO: We’re part of the Albany scene, we’re part of the Troy scene and that means a lot to us, but also going out to a new place and seeing fresh faces… I mean, you can go 20 minutes away and be like, “oh, I didn’t know these people lived in my hometown.” To go to a completely different town is like having a fresh start for a night.
SCHNEIDER: I agree with Kyle. Playing out-of-town shows is really cool.
Q: What’s your favorite thing about the Albany scene?
SCHNEIDER: I’d say the diversity of the Albany scene. There’s the Albany metal scene, but then you just have so many other bands around Albany that are pretty popular too but aren’t metal. There’s so much diversity in the whole Albany area that I think makes the scene really cool, and everyone seems to respect each other, too.
CARROLL: It’s just massive. There’s definitely so much musical inspiration in the whole Capital District and the whole New York area. Everyone who I hang out with now, we all just share that love for music.
PIPINO: I think the Albany scene in general has come a long way, because I’ve been playing shows since I was 14 years old. I’ve been playing shows for almost ten years. It was definitely different in the beginning, when I was in a young band, we weren’t as united as we are now. It was very all over the place.
DEORIO: I love that I can walk into a show and see all the people I talk to there. I love that we’re all friends, I love that we can all put our differences behind us. I love that we can all be on a friendly level while we’re together, even if we’re not actually friends.
Q: What’s your favorite venue that you’ve played at?
CARROLL: I would pick Northern Lights/Upstate Concert Hall first. It’s just one of the venues that I’ve gone to since I saw my first concerts there. It has great sound quality, it’s almost the perfect size, and it’s got a nice atmosphere. The feeling of being on stage there is awesome. Other than that, honestly, I miss Bogies. Bogies was an awesome place. I still think it is. I think everyone definitely misses it a little bit.
DEORIO: My favorite venue that I’ve ever played would the basement inside of Proctor’s Theater (Proctor’s Underground). I know that’s one of Jon’s favorites, too. It’s a big room and we were all on the floor, so the interaction with the crowd was really cool. You’d walk down the steps and get a great view of everything that was going on.
CARROLL: I’d definitely second that.
PIPINO: I don’t think I have a favorite. I’ve been lucky enough to play at a lot of small venues over the years. There’s been so many venues, and honestly, it’s not even the venues. It’s the people. It all depends on the vibe. We’re trying to get to the point where we make that vibe. I’ll play anywhere anyone will have me.
Q: Generally, what’s your writing process like?
DEORIO: Normally Neil plays blast beats for an hour, and then someone just starts screaming when they’re done with his sh*t. That’s not a joke.
SCHNEIDER: I’ll blast until someone tells me to stop.
DEORIO: With the EP that I wrote before, I wrote it and let the former members kind of tweak it, but with the batch of songs we’re working on right now for the record we’re putting out in a few months, those were also songs that were written by me and tweaked by the other bandmates. I guess you could say it’s me and Kyle sitting down and going over a song, and then Jon or Neil will put their own spin on it, but we all kind of have free range to say what we think another member should be doing. It’s a never-ending tweak session. Oh, and when we’re done writing the song, Neil continues blasting.
Q: So what would you say your current influences are for the new material you’re writing? You mentioned earlier that you started to drift to different elements.
DEORIO: We have. With this, I feel like I wanted to write more aggressive material, but at the same time, I kind of wanted to play with other styles of hardcore punk that have become popular in the past few years. I also like the idea of, with this more metal influenced group of people, to take things into a more extreme direction, like post-rock or mathcore. Lyrically, I feel like I am more influenced than emo musicians.
PIPINO: As I said earlier, I believe we are an amalgamation of all these different subgenres of punk and hardcore. The coolest thing about this band is Nick has never brought us a song that we listened to and thought, “This sounds like this band.” It’s always concise, it’s OCD, it’s through Nick’s filter and becomes its own thing. Hopefully by the time we release a full length album, we’ll really bring everything together that we’ve been working on.
Q: Do you plan to play any new material at your upcoming shows?
DEORIO: I would like to, but it all depends on how certain we are on it. I wouldn’t be shocked if we played a new song or two at our show in March.
Q If you could sum up your band in one word, what would it be?
DEORIO: Ambitious.
SCHNEIDER: Dank. I do like ambitious.
DEORIO: I guess you can use dank. I guess.
PEPINO: Cordial. 2016 for OCD is going to be cordial.
Q: Final question. What would you like your band to be remember for?
SCHNEIDER: I’d say that we’d like to be remembered as just a bunch of cool crazy cats who played some tuneage and just hung out.
DEORIO: It’s true. I just would like to be remembered for being in a band that loved to get on stage every step of the way and was just able to have fun, whether we were playing for ten people or a hundred and ten people.
PIPINO: I don’t think what we’re remembered for is for me to decide. It’s for whoever listens to us to figure out. I’m just so focused on doing this band and releasing music and playing the shows and just being as there as I can be, because a lot of people these days aren’t actually there. They’re mentally somewhere else, and I’m just trying to be as present as possible and our legacy, my legacy is to be decided by other people.
SCHNEIDER: And I’ll add, just being remembered as a band. There’s a lot of bands out there that are filled with people that just like the idea of being in a band instead of actually being a band.
Be sure to check out OCD on Facebook at facebook.com/themostOCD and stream their EP, “Nothing Will Be Set In Stone,” on Bandcamp at opencasketdivision.bandcamp.com. Their upcoming shows are March 21 in Albany at the Fuze Box with Hollow Earth and Church Tongue, and April 16 in Syracuse with Ego Destroys and Revival. OCD would also like everyone reading to know that they are available to play any show you would like to put them on, so contact them if you would like to book them on any future events.
Big thanks to Nick, Kyle, Jon and Neil for sitting down with me!
