Album art for I Gave You My Worst.
“New Haven’s Premier Homocore Experience #1’ — the first song on local hardcore punk band Savage World’s new album I Gave You My Worst – hits the listener head on with a heavy onslaught of sound and a bold, obscenity-laced statement of identity.
“I’m so done with motherfuckers / Telling me to stay under the covers / I’m not hiding who I am / But they still feed me an insider smile / With a side of heteronormative denial / I’m not hiding who I am.”
Savage World vocalist Matt Fantastic — who is also co-owner of Elm City Games on Orange Street — wrote those lyrics, which are just a sample of what the six-song album, released in May, has in store for its listeners.
“The record in general is lyrically super personal,” he said. “Even the political is through the filter of the personal. New Haven is a meaningful place to me. I have a cultural connection here. New Haven is a part of who I am, so the writing about it is super personal. New Haven is where this stuff happened.”
Although the lyrics are “all Matt’s” according to Joe Zaffino, the band’s guitarist, the music on this record was “collaborative overall.”
“Joe or Matt [Rudd, the band’s bassist] would begin with a riff,” said Fantastic. “Jimmy [Barnard, the band’s drummer] may have a drum pattern that’s cool. Everyone has their opinions on it and then we would try something. Once you’re in that, you try variations and add ins, maybe change the vocal pattern too. One thing I’ve always enjoyed about writing is it’s very much a conversation. Everyone’s open to suggestions and everyone feels comfortable. We were able to do that with these songs.”
Although the material feels as timely as if it was written in the past month, Fantastic noted that some of the songs have been around a while and some are on the newer side, “a real mix,” he said. “It’s nine minutes of material,” he said with a laugh. “When it was ready, it was ready. We’re not trying to meet a release schedule like one a week or month” when it came to writing the music.
The band initially had a plan for the release of this record that ended up not panning out. The “original original” plan was for a split 12-inch with friends Flapjack Attack, “but we took longer than we should have,” said Fantastic. Flapjack Attack released its half before May.
“Then we were looking to do a vinyl press, but with the inability to play shows [due to Covid-19 restrictions] it’s difficult to sell physical copies, physical anything really,” said Fantastic. “The majority of our record sales are at live shows, so without live shows to promote the record and sell merch pressing a record doesn’t make a ton of sense yet.”
The band ended up recording the record with a friend of Fantastic’s — and with friend Nick Martin playing bass — over a longer period of time, but to the band’s advantage.
“My buddy Greg, he’s a friend from my teenage years, owns Silver Bullet Studios [in Northwestern CT],” said Fantastic. “He does bigger records with bigger bands — metal and punk — and we got to sneak in on off days. Our attitude going in was the record will be done when it’s done. I can’t do eight hours of vocals. The guitars, the drums … we’re taking breaks.”
“After multiple takes, like three or four takes, you lose your peak,” said Zaffino. “You can only do so much before you fall apart. Doing it for 20 minutes [at a live show] is different.”
“Live or recorded, it’s about explosive energy,” added Fantastic. “We take one break when we play live. For us it’s this feeling like being in a fight, a cathartic explosion.”
Zaffino agreed. “It’s unrelenting, and you got to keep going, maybe take a sip of my beer and tune my guitar while Matt talks to the audience, but it’s all killer, no filler.”
“Record or live, we want people to be exhausted,” said Fantastic. “Feel that unrelenting energy and then it’s done. You get it out. I get up there and I explode. I’m drenched in sweat and falling over and struggling for breath when I’m done. Playing a good show is the best thing in the world: the most physical, the most emotional. It’s everything about being alive.”
“It’s a great release,” added Zaffino. “It’s you and your band, your friends, and then when people you don’t know are like, ‘hey that was great,’ that’s cool too, if you can make someone’s night and give them a good time.”
“The nature of our connectivity to others is a shared emotional experience, being in this room with these people up front banging and singing along,” said Fantastic. “That’s so difficult, with punk and hardcore bands — the physicality, the release, you’re not going to get that right now. It’s something I’m really missing and something I’m terrified about how long it’s going to be until we have that, that emotional visceral experience.”
Christina Weinbaum Photo
Joe Zaffino and Matt Fantastic.
The band had been looking at doing a tour of the Northeast with friends “like a mini tour of our hometown spots” in Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.
“It would be cool if we blew up, but we are realistic,” said Fantastic. “We’re just as happy playing to a packed Three Sheets with our friends. New Haven is big enough that there’s a lot of cool shit, but also you know people. All the weirdos know each other. There’s a lot of crossover and support. You’re one person away from everything going on in the city. Everyone is supportive. When we play here it’s a party with our friends. I have just as much fun playing in New Haven with friends as I did with one to two thousand people in California” — that was when he was 18 and touring with other bands.
“Those were incredible moments,” Fantastic continued, “but I’m just as happy in a basement with cool people. I’ve always been a basement show fan. There’s no distance, no stage. It’s a collective experience. I mean, I have the mic and I’m the loudest, but it’s all of us.”
“Shows like that are different because everyone at the basement show wants to be there,” said Zaffino. “It’s not a bar. They’re emotionally invested. They know what’s going on. Their energy: you feel it.”
Even though venues are closed and live shows are at a virtual standstill, Fantastic and Zaffino agreed “it’s a good time to be in an angry band.”
“They say the worse the politics, the better the punk,” Fantastic said, recalling the explosion of punk music that came out during the Margaret Thatcher and Reagan/Bush eras. “Protest art in general is angry and reactionary. In times of regressive social policies and politics, artists tend to be more connected to their shared humanity. Creatives are more connected to others. The Venn diagram of the very creative and those very incensed with the state of the world is a huge crossover. It’s empathetic to make good art, looking at the world and wanting to punch a hole through the scene.”
For Fantastic that creative connection cannot separate the personal and political from where his lyrics arise. “Political jams are still from a personal place. For me it’s the visceral, personal element.”
Lipgloss Crisis Photo
Matt Fantastic as part of the Patron Saints of New Haven project.
He referenced the second song on the record, “Unpacking My Neon Pink Messenger Bag of Privilege.”
“When I wrote it, it meant a lot and now it means even more. It addresses institutionalized and systemic racism. In the song I’m questioning my place in it … in a system that’s so fucked, how do we make it better?”
He also referred back to the first song on the record, previously mentioned here.
“I present in the traditional masculine. The fact that I’m queer, and that hardcore is traditionally very masculine, people will feel okay talking to me and saying these derogatory things and I’m always navigating how to call people out in those situations.”
Another song on the record, “Patron Saints of New Haven,” is named after the project created by Fantastic’s friend and fellow artist Lipgloss Crisis, in which Fantastic posed in a nun outfit holding a bottle of wine.
“Singing in a hardcore band tends to be a super masculine thing. Being aggressively queer in a very masculine scene, even if it’s progressive, there’s a latent discomfort in some people,” Fantastic said.
“I love that you put your spin on it,” said Zaffino to Fantastic.
The last song on the record, “It Ain’t Always Unicorns and Rainbows,” is, according to Fantastic, “a grim note to end on,” and includes the lines: “Maybe today will be okay or maybe not / So I cover it with lies and say that I’m just fine.”
Fantastic is quick to note that “it’s not where I am anymore,” but he acknowledges it is again perhaps a scenario many can relate to at the moment. As a band, Savage World wants to do its part to give back to fans and anyone who is looking for a little something new in their lives. To that end, the band asks listeners simply to pay what they want for it on Bandcamp.
“If we can’t play shows, we want people to hear it,” Fantastic said. “We don’t want your five bucks if you’re out of work. Especially with digital, it literally cost us nothing and if this is the way you get the record, then buy me a beer the next time you see me.”
“If you enjoy it, come out and see us when we’re on tour and buy a shirt,” said Zaffino.
“We have day jobs, so we get to skirt that line,” added Fantastic. “We push ourselves to be professional — make a record that stands up and have a tight live set — but at the same time there’s not that external pressure. If we make money, that’s great, but the band is not there to fulfill us other than creatively. We do it because we have to. We have stuff to talk about. It’s therapeutic.”
Fantastic, co-owner of Elm City Games, also spoke of the effect of the shutdown on that business.
“We’re going to open through the phases due to it being a place where a bunch of people get together,” he said about the Orange Street storefront. “The store itself is open and we will follow the WHO guidelines for game playing, but as far as Elm City Games goes, we would rather go out of business than kill someone’s grandmother. We’re excited to be there, but at the end of the day you can’t buy someone’s grandma back.”
The two bandmates remain present and hopeful, eager to return to what they love: performing live. “I’ve been doing this with Matt for years,” said Zaffino. “I gotta crank up my guitar and hear him yell. I can’t wait to get out. It’s been tough these past few months.”
“Putting out an angry record fits the mood,” Fantastic reiterated. “It speaks very much to what is going on.”
I Gave You My Worst by Savage World is available on bandcamp here.