Sick Of It All is one of the seminal bands of the New York Hardcore scene of the 1980s and 1990s. In a career that has lasted over twenty years, the five-piece has created a library of work, from 1989’s Blood, Sweat and No Tears, to their 2006 album, Death To Tyrants.
Brash, in-your-face, and outspoken, SOIA has earned a world wide following and the admiration and respect of their peers. As proven by the variety of bands on this year’s tribute album, Our Impact Will Be Felt (Abacus), the scope of their influence can be heard not only in younger hardcore acts, but across punk, rock, and metal genres as well.
ALARM asked several artists that contributed a song to the compilation to speak to us about how Sick Of It All has inspired them.
Fondest Sick Of It All memory:
Chris McLane, Stretch Arm Strong: Touring with them for the first time two months after 9/11 and playing at the Knitting Factory in New York. We walked down to the remains of the World Trade Center and tried to take it all in.
Shane Embury, Napalm Death: There are a lot. I remember on a day off, back on our tour in ’91, we stole a bunch of shopping trolleys and raced around in circles in a parking lot crashing into each other. I remember a few onlookers got very annoyed.
Gary Bennett, Kill Your Idols: I have two. The first is when I watched them blow a very notable act off the stage in Belgium at a festival. This band treated Sick Of It All and everyone else like idiots that day. They refused to play last, but took the headlining money. Sick Of It All went on last and blew them away harder than I’ve ever seen anyone get blown away before.
That same day they asked us if they could jump on the show we had the next day because they were off. It was at the Lintfabriek in Belgium, and they made a surprise appearance on our show. It ruled. They insisted we still headline because it was our show.
Bryan Kienlen, Bouncing Souls: Sharing a bus with those guys in Europe and watching them make fun of each other. Developing our voice impressions of them over the course of that tour.
Andreas Kisser, Sepultura: A show in Phoenix, AZ, when Paulo, Sepultura’s bass player, jammed with them. It was great. Too bad a little after that a huge fight broke out and the police stopped the show…
Jeremy Hiebert, Comeback Kid: My fondest memory of Sick of it All was a sick circle pit at Les Rendezvous in my hometown, Winnipeg, [Manitoba], with AFI around 1999. Winnipeg is great for circle pits. I love to see bands come to Winnipeg, not expecting much, and then seeing a huge circle pit. It gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.
Why did you choose this song for the tribute album?
Shane Embury, Napalm Death: The reason why we chose “Who Sets The Rules” was that I guess most people would expect us to choose one off the band’s first album, but we thought that was too easy. There are some great riffs on the Scratch The Surface album and plus, to be honest, we kind of borrowed one of the riffs from this track a long time ago, anyways. Well, sort of!
Bryan Kienlen, Bouncing Souls: “Good Lookin’ Out” is right up the Bouncing Souls’ alley. It’s a song we might have written. Or, should I say it’s song I wish we’d written! It sure is fun to play.
Andreas Kisser, Sepultura: It was great to hear that the guys themselves saved “Scratch the Surface” for us. We felt honored by that. It’s an awesome song.
Jim Lindberg, Pennywise: We chose the song “My Life” because we love the song and the sentiment and it sounds like something we would do. You can tell both our bands were brought up listening to fist-in-the-air anthems. Plus, my voice sounds like a chipmunk on helium and Lou’s sounds like he gargles with whiskey and rusty nails every morning, so we were pretty limited on what songs we could pull off.