The five-piece band discusses experiencing hardcore in quarantine and defying the limits of their genre.
Photo by Marlon
The atrocities of the past five months have been described in great detail far too many times, so it feels like any further description would be futile and a bit cowardly—we’re here, and we’re dealing with it. Looking backwards in any capacity is alluring yet counterproductive, but at the same time, it is incredibly difficult to not aggressively project onto just about everything and everyone still actively piling on to the colossal peak of demise that seemingly rose from hell and penetrated our entire livelihood. Rather than cursing the world and all its inhabitants, it’s much healthier to listen to Playytime.
Playytime makes music that can both drain and refill all rage and regrets within listeners. They do so by emphatically blasting these two solemn sentiments into our ears in a grungy yet orchestral manor. Their guitars are heavy, their drums brutal, their lyrics poetic. The last characterization is a bit surprising for a band with such destructive, spitfire instrumentation. For a lot of listeners, I bet it wouldn’t make a difference whether lead singer Obi’s verbal jabs were nonsensical or Shakespearean. Don’t be one of those listeners. Listen to Playytime closely, or else you’ll miss some candidly painful reflections, such as the closing lines of the The Fun Never Ends: “If you want me to take you to another world / Where all the people laugh and sing / And children have their voices heard / The joy is buried beneath you / Show them and you’ll fool the world.”
The five-piece hardcore band has been a major player in one of Atlanta’s most “if you know, you know” scenes for the past two years (other notable acts in this scene include fellow hardcore groups Upchuck and Symbiote). Playytime recorded an incredibly raw demo tape back in 2018, about a year after they formed, then made a name for themselves by scouring sweaty crowds with their explosive live sets. In 2019 they began to emerge as one of Atlanta’s premier live acts, opening for Show Me The Body and Warish. But interestingly enough, they didn’t begin to acquire a fanbase outside of their scene until after live shows were canceled. This is a result of how far spread the promotional videos for their debut tape The Fun Never Ends were, and how well-received it was upon release. Though they’re defined as a hardcore band, their influences range far beyond that genre. In tracks like “Wonder” and “Windlike,” Playytime shows that they can make slower, somewhat sweet songs that somehow pair perfectly with the crippling barrage of bullets sprayed in tracks like “Torch” and “Hit the Floor.”
In an age where the majority of human interaction is conducted over the internet, music like Playytime’s, which screams life and experience and everything the two entails, is exactly what the world needs. In one of their first-ever interviews, we discussed their background, the state of hardcore in a concertless world, and their desire to expand hardcore’s sound and stigma.
Could you all introduce yourself?
Obi: I’m Obi, I sing.
Ross: I’m Ross, I play drums.
Micky: I’m Micky, I play the bass.
Menene: I’m Menene, I play rhythm guitar.
Travis: I’m Trav and I play lead guitar.
When and how did y’all form?
Obi: In the summer of 2017 Trav hit me on Instagram and said, “Hey I have this idea for a band, I’m tryna do an all Black and Brown type of thing.” It was initially supposed to be really really heavy, on some Hatebreed type shit, and we definitely have certain songs in that realm, but after we had been playing for a while we began to form our own sound.
Did y’all know each other from being in other bands or what? How did the link form?
Menene: Me and Travis and Ross played in a band called TnT before.
Ross: Yeah, we linked through mutual friends and were in a couple of different bands that all hung out and practiced together.
Obi: Yeah, we’d been friends and playing together, and even when Menene joined and started practicing with us, it felt like she had always been in the band.
Who are some collective influences?
Trav: They’re all over the place. We’re trying to break away from being categorized as one thing.
Obi: Yeah, we’re trying to make something based off everything that we like. While our roots are in hardcore, we had all already made something straight hardcore before. So with this we decided to try to make something a little more refreshing.
How would you describe one of your live sets to someone who may be unfamiliar with you or the hardcore scene?
Micky: [Laughs] Obi goes crazy. We all get into it. It’s loud, heavy, it’s fun. We just want people to have a good time.
Ross: Obi go crazy.
Menene: Yeah.
Ross: He goes crazy. I love that shit though. We’ve played shows that aren’t meant for “hardcore” and people usually aren’t expecting that sound unless they’re there for us. We usually end up surprising people with how fast and how loud we play. But we don’t give a fuck. It’s just fun, and surprising people is one of the best parts of the experience.
Photo by Mason
So I heard your 2018 demo sometime last year and it was nice—raw as fuck—but this new tape brought y’all to the next level. The mixing was so good.
Obi: Thank you. Our friend Jaylen mixed that. He plays in a band called Symbiote, but he recorded our demo too. But I feel like since our demo, even with Jaylen still recording, literally everyone just got so much better from that point. We definitely took a step forward.
Yeah for sure. How’d this tape come about? Did you plan on releasing it before COVID-19 broke out?
Trav: We recorded this like a year ago.
Menene: Yeah about a year ago.
Travis: Wasn’t it like last summer?
Menene: October. Yeah it was recorded last fall, I think.
Ross: It was to the point where we were just looking at the music and I remember Trav saying, “Damn, do we wanna drop this?” because the sound changed. Literally the world had started changing from when we started recording it. But then we started shooting videos and having a lot of creative direction about it, and then we started changing as people and we thought, “Yo we wanna drop this. We wanna play this music. We wanna tour off this. But this might not be the best time to drop.” But people still wanted our music, so we dropped it.
Do y’all think that hardcore can persist as a genre in a world without live shows?
Micky: I feel like the live show is what makes hardcore. Everyone getting together and experiencing it together. It would be so different because we feed off the energy of the crowd. So yeah, it’d be different without live shows, hopefully they come back when all of this is over.
Ross: Guitar music for me — especially heavy guitar music — I don’t be listening to that shit on my Spotify. I’ll listen to the heavy bands that I love, but I swear to God there’s no more than 20 [songs] on my Spotify because I love their stuff live. But honestly I don’t be listening to that stuff around the house when I’m just trying to chill and shit. But I don’t know man, that’s a good question. So much has changed, and so much has happened with music, so I don’t really know how it’s gonna come back and be perceived by people.
Menene: Yeah, who knows what it’s gonna be like over. I’m sure it will persist and that people will be excited. But in this current time, a lot of what makes hardcore is the energy and the shows. I love going to shows and that’s what makes me love hardcore. I feel like it’s a genre for people who just generally love music, so it’s like, “you love hardcore but you also listen to all this other stuff,” so you save that for shows. I mainly listen to hardcore at shows, a lot of it is the community aspect.
Obi: Hardcore is definetly a community, for sure. But you also don’t truly experience hardcore unless you go to a show. You can listen to it on Spotify and like it. But I feel like you can’t get the full scope of it unless you’re actually there, in that room, with an actual hardcore show. It’s such a niche thing. You’re not gonna get the same feeling from just listening to it. So can it exist without live music? I guess the short answer is no, but at the same time, we can still push the sound and bands can use this time to buckle time to focus more on the recording aspect, that way when things do get back to normal we’ll have something to show for it.
Micky: I think a lot of recordings of hardcore in general do not sound good. It’s more of a feeling, like Obi was saying. For the most part, a good punk band sounds better live than they do recorded.
Ross: That’s facts. It’s kinda like rave music. We’re not finna just chill and go crazy ravin’ and shit at the crib. Every genre comes with a lifestyle, and guitar music, punk, and all that shit, is so dependent on live music. Whereas a lot of other genres like rap – a lot of other artists could just not play shows for a year and be fine. But anybody who has a guitar in their band could not do that.
Obi: If you really wanna experience the full scope of Playytime, you gotta come to one of our shows. It’s been kinda weird to adjust to not playing shows. And a lot of these songs that we have on the tape were written, at least for me with the lyrics, with the thought of “Okay, how can I write these to make sure they translate well live.” Whenever I’m making music I’m always taking the live aspect into consideration.
Because of all that, do y’all think it’s easier to be a solo artist than being in a band in this day and age?
Trav: Probably.
Menene: Yeah.
Ross: That’s a good question because the expenses are always gonna be higher as a band. Then you gotta deal with traveling expenses with moving the large instruments and amps. We were just like, “Let’s go tour!” but nawww, first let’s get the van, let’s get the amps…Literally the whole money aspect. Moving with five people is always gonna be tougher than moving as one person, which is tough because it really discourages the group participation effort of musicians. And that takes away a lot of artistic chemistry. So yeah, financially, it’s a lot easier to be a solo artist, but creatively, it’s so much better to work in a group.
Micky: We haven’t practiced since all this broke out. But if you’re a solo artist you have the ability to do something anytime you want to. With any group of people it’s harder, especially in quarantine.
Assuming live shows are put on halt for the foreseeable future, what would the plan for Playytime be?
Trav: I’m definitely trying to record some more stuff. But, that kinda ties back to the question that you were asking about the state of hardcore in general. I think it could be cool to try to evoke that same feeling [of live shows] through the tracks. For Playytime, it’s gonna be interesting to experiment more with the recording process to evoke that same feeling. Or even something that more so reflects the present feeling of being quarantined.
Obi: I think it’d give us time to be more creative. With the way we put out our album, we had a really clear vision of what was gonna go on the record as far as visually and aesthetically. We didn’t wanna go the route that a lot of hardcore bands go: a demo, a record, then that’s it. We really wanna be well-rounded. So we’re definitely gonna try to record some new stuff. We’re gonna take what we’ve already made and use it as our foundation, then go up a notch and see what else we can do.