Justin was first introduced to heavier music by his cousin, who turned him on to Descendents and AFI right before My Chemical Romance enjoyed their commercial breakthrough. Soon after, he stepped onto a well-trodden bridge into darker realms by discovering Slipknot, and his cousin was on hand to lead him further into the carnage. “From there he showed me a lot of straight up hardcore bands,” Justin remembers. “Metalcore was really popular in San Jose at the time – I didn’t even know that my city had a local hardcore scene.
“But I saw so many [touring] bands like Terror, like Winds Of Plague, and to me all that shit was the same – it didn’t sound like one was a more deathcore sound and one was a more traditional hardcore sound. The first hardcore show I actually went to was in 2007, Evergreen Terrace and Casey Jones, I think August Burns Red played too, because it was one of their earlier tours, and the Warriors, who are also a really good band. That was my first time seeing traditional hardcore moshing, I guess.”
Justin’s interest later spread to Bridge 9 straight-edge bands such as Champion and Have Heart before settling closer to home. One thing that is eye-poppingly obvious about the San Jose-Santa Cruz and wider Bay Area scene is how eager its members are to get behind one another, and for a lot of the people involved that commitment spans years. Long before they were part of the buzziest hardcore hotbed going, they were putting shows on, cycling through bands and generally trying to keep things afloat with a resolutely DIY work ethic.
Constructing A War Against You’s title-track makes this plain, with Justin training his sights on fly-by-night fans who drop into the scene for cred before disappearing without contributing anything. ‘Like rats you breed, feeding on what’s not yours to keep,’ he screams. ‘Shatter your hopes, your fantasies. Field Of Flames is your enemy.’