Here’s an article from last month’s edition of “Big Cheese” magazine featuring Glassjaw. It’s a good read so please do so! I’ve transcribed the text from the images since they were so small so please read below:

The Return of Kings

THE GLASSJAW dressing room in Webster hall, New York City is a smoky hive of activity. Band members, crew friends and girlfriends mill about it’s compact coolness, sharing joints and planning out the evening ahead. Sure, tonight’s show - the third to last date of a barely publicized thirteen date trek - is over and it’s already late, but we do, after all, find ourselves in the city that never sleeps. At the centre of all this commotion is Daryl Palumbo, seemingly the common like between everyone in attendance at this informal, accidental aftershow. Fitting from conversation to conversation with wide eyed enthusiasm and a broad smile that even his hefty chin growth cannot conceal, the singer is clearly on a high, emotionally and literally.

And why not? Just half an hour earlier; Palumbo and his Glassjaw bandmates - guitarist Justin Beck, bassist Manny Carrero and drummer Durijah Lang - had a sold out Webster Hall eating from the palm of their collection hand, hanging on their every note. Cause for celebration in anyone’s books, but considering that Glassjaw has, for all intents and purposes been a non entity sine 2003, such rapturous crowd responses are all the more revelatory.

“This tour has been awesome, and tonight was the biggest hometown headline show we’ve ever done. Glassjaw feels better than it ever did,” gushes Palumbo; “I’ve been watching kids get fucked up, destroying each other. Tonight I saw some guy basically strangling a girl. It must be a new thing at NYC alternative metal shows; the strangle move. You just gotta choke the shit out of each other.” Glassjaw’s recent hiatus certainly hasn’t quelled their popularity on their home turf, the bands dedicated fanbase apparently well versed in their tendency to appear and disappear without warning. Even this tour - dubbed “100% Maybe” in suitably tongue-in-cheek fashion - came pretty much out of the blue.

“The Deftones had some shows open and there was talk of use doing those,” explains Palumbo of Glassjaw’s surprise return: ‘Head Automatica was off for three and a half weeks, Classic Case was off, and so was Saves the Day. So, we all had time off for the holidays and we were like if we’re gonna do those Deftones shows, lets take advantage of us all being home and play straight up to New Year’s. We were like, “Lets fucking do it.””

So yeah, it’s true, Glassjaw are back. For how long is really anybodies guess, but Palumbo - who has, of course spent his time away from Glassjaw’s cathartic, urgent aggressions getting his glossy pop on in Head Automatica - assures that the band are truly reborn and revitalized.

“This is THE version of the band; the “best of” line up, if you will” laughs the singer between impressively large tokes on a , ahem, rather fragrant cigarette. “This is the commemorative edition of Glassjaw, complete with a bonus disc. Manny and Durijah do all the commentary, and there’s a bunch of deleted scenes of everything Beck says, The Criterion Edition of GJ has a full seven hours of Beck saying things wrong.”

On the evidence of tonight’s triumphant performance, it’s not difficult to be convinced by the frontman’s sentiment; the likes of ‘Mu Empire‘, ‘Two Tabs of Mescaline‘ and ‘Pink Roses‘ sounding as fresh as the day they were first unleashed on 2002’s benchmark ‘Worship and Tribute‘ opus. Despite being one guitarist down, following the mysterious dismissal of Todd Weinstock (now of Men, Women & Children), Glassjaw 2007 remain a post hardcore tour-de-force who still effortlessly supersede the countless bands that have followed their blazing trail.

But, what of the future? The handful of new tracks inserted into the bands set a hint at a darker, more challenging direction for Glassjaw; particularly the excellently titled ‘(You Think You’re) John Fucking Lennon‘, a track that boasts a menacing lead riff, an awkward groove and Palumbo screaming his lungs out in a way not heard since their 2000 classic debut, ‘Everything you Ever Wanted To Know about Silence‘. Simply put, anyone only familiar with Palumbo via Head Automatica is in for quite a shock.

“The headspaces between the two bands are mad different,” chuckles Palumbo, mischievously; “i gotta get fucking pissed to play with GJ. It’s like a mental switch, I have to have that. But if I had to play with Head Automatica right now it’d be on. I mean, I’m not a fucking actor but I perform. Performance is fifty percent of what I do, and it’s not like I’m forcing it, because I totally lose my shit up there. But when the adrenaline kicks in my body knows what to do. It’s definitely been weird though, not doing Glassjaw.”

The burning question is, will this new Glassjaw material actually see the light of day, beyond fan-filmed live videos on YouTube?

“We’re definitely a band, and we’re definteily doing a record,” assures Palumbo; “The new material is coming along awesome. We’re gonna produce the next album ourselves and we’re gonna do it as soon as we can. So far we have ‘(You Think You’re) John Fucking Lennon, ‘Jesus Glue’, which we wrote for the holiday season, ‘cos if you’re gonna put it back together you gotta start at home, and ‘Natural Born Farmer’, which is slightly older. We played a primitive version of that track on the 2003 Warped Tour, but now we finally finished it. We’ve got some other ideas too that we’re fucking with whenever we get the chance, which hasn’t been that much as we’re all pretty busy, but the next record will be one of those things that happens as soon as it physically can happen. We’ve started tracking some stuff already, and this time next year, I’d hope we’d have the record out. We’re trying, there’s just a way we want to go about doing it.

“The caliber of players we have in the band now, I feel that doors will be opened upon “jamming”. We just have to get the time to jam. But, I’m here to tell you Glassjaw is heavier than ever! Everyone keeps asking “What’s the new shit gonna be like?” … Well the heavy shit is fifty times heavier and the leftfield, avant-garde shit is fifty times more melodic and avant-garde. We’re more out of our heads than we ever were.” Fingers crossed folks, fingers crossed.

Words: Leander Gloversmith
Photos: Robert Scheuerman

Thanks to MuEmpire1979 for the scans !