CT Garage Punk Band Victimless Target Talks Influences, Mental Health, and the State of the Scene.

From left to right, Eugene (white mask), Ed (black mask), Connor (pink mask), and Noah (yellow mask)

Halle (Interviewer): Who is Victimless Target?

Connor (Vocals): Victimless Target is really just a shitty, stupid band we made, for fun, and we just kind of play bullshit and have fun with it.

H: What kind of music are you guys making right now?

Eddie (guitar): Hardcore Punk

C: Yeah, like garage punk, hardcore, anything that you could call punk, whatever the fuck you want to call it.

H: You guys are in CT, what bands, locally or otherwise, are you pulling your influences from right now? 

E: I’d say mainly Yankee Bastard, they're from Richmond, Virginia, so I do take a lot of inspiration from them, hopefully one day I’ll get to play with them. 

C: For me personally, my vocals, I’d say, highly, highly Ian MacKaye from Minor Threat. Out of Step was one of my favorite albums and really put things on for me, music-wise. Dead Kennedys, definitely Jello Biafra. HR from Bad Brains, the way he acts on stage, definitely influences me. 

Eugene (Drums): As a musician, I am into a lot of stuff, so that really influences my playing. I like to add my own spin and style to my drumming when I’m writing my parts for our music. So, I have inspiration from different genres, like jazz, punk obviously, hardcore, metal, things of that nature. 

Noah (Bass): For me, I have been listening to a lot of Joni Mitchell and Jaco Pastorius recordings, and I’ve just been trying to listen to those and take what I like and then take what I like and try to find ways to serve the song and play the kind of stuff I like to play. 

Noah, Eddie, Connor, and Eugene

H: We have influences from pretty much everywhere. Is it the same when you’re writing? Lyrically, or otherwise? 

C: It’s just whatever we want to say, whatever we feel like we need to say. Mostly, I write lyrics, but whenever anybody has riffs or ideas, we pull them in, and we just start going. We riff pretty well together; that’s where most of our ideas come from. If you ever see us live, we like to play a little bit of jazz in between, it’s just fun. Fuck around a little bit. 

H: You guys have music out right now, you have a demo on Bandcamp, tell me about that. 

E: It’s just like recordings we made in Connor’s basement, and I mean, it’s very raw versions of what we want and what we want to play. 

EG: Literally, some of the first two songs were from the first rehearsal we ever did. 

C: The idea of the album, to me, is that nothing is really something, you know? In the sense that nothing is a word, so it has to be something, right? That’s where we got the “Untitled_0” idea. So, “VT_Untitled_0” is on Bandcamp and hopefully YouTube by the time this comes out. 

E: Regarding the first two songs, we had a couple other members at first, it was a different time for us. We brought Eugene in and honestly, Eugene totally saved the band. 

N: That was, wow, that was October. It must have been a Dog Pound story post that told me about you guys. 

H: So, you guys met through social media then? 

C: We met on Instagram!

E: Yeah, I forgot who posted it. I think it was Zach [Fontanez] who posted it. 

C: Allie [Tracz], my friend from Fafa, who is another local band in CT, started to repost my flyer I made, looking to start the band. After that, I think Zach and a few others reposted it as well, which is how we got here. Eddie is in another band, called CIA (Crucified in Action) and he picked up Eugene from that band, and we added him to the bill, and it all worked out so we stuck with it. 

H: We talked briefly about that demo, what are your stand out tracks?  What is important to you about this album and what do you want people to know when they’re listening to it? 

C: I’ve written the lyrics. My lyrics definitely come from my mental health. I’m not all too well. I have schizoaffective and that clearly affects me a lot, not being able to drive to shows or get to the places I need to get to. Along with my mental health, I am also an alcoholic and a drug addict. I’ve been sober for 2 years. Hydroxyzine is about a drug that I take for that, that helps me with anxiety and helps me from thinking about taking benzos, drinking, or smoking. 

“I Wanna Blow My Shit Smooth Off” ( IWBMSSO_0) is about that, about killing myself, because I’m having too much troubles. 

E: Yeah, that one, that has my riff. 

C: Yeah, so we took Ed’s riff and we added my screaming, as a way to interpret the pure agony that sometimes goes on inside your mind. Not everybody can handle that. As funny as that song title is to people, you know, sometimes it’s real serious. I would love to throw a show eventually for schizoaffective. It’s a lesser known version of schizophrenia, and I’d like to show my support for it. Mental health, especially in the scene, people dealing with suicide, as hard as it is to talk about. For people who are transgender, I’m not transgender so I can’t say this for me, but I know people who are transgender who are dealing with all this bullshit in the world, and I know they suffer. We have to fight for eachother. 

E: We need more of that. 

C: I’m going to be honest, where I live, there are a lot of, well, hicks, There are a lot of bad people and just people I don’t like. So I wrote a song called Fuck Durham about the hicks and the trucks and the cows and I just hate it all so much. 

E: I’m in a band called Crucified In Action, thats the band I made before this one, that’s where a lot of lyrics I write go to that band. But there are things that don’t fit, like Fuck Durham, but it fits this band extraordinarily well. 

C: It’s fun! The rhythm of that song is fun. I know Noah enjoys playing that song, Eugene enjoys the drums. Ed enjoys his riff. I love the rhyming. 

E: I would say its our best song. 

C: If you’re going to check out a song, let it be that one! I noticed it’s actually our least listened to song on Bandcamp, please check that one out. Its fun, its got comedy. Comedy is a way to deal with trauma comedy is a way to deal with everything. You gotta fight with comedy.

H: I know music isn’t the only thing you are influenced by, can you tell me more about the other places that you’re pulling from. 

C: Um, Ed Gein…the serial killer. There’s a song called Ed Gein about that and theres a lot of comedy in that one, too. He’s still human, but he’s an awful fucking human. I know theres a lot of comedy in it for being about a serial killer. I got a lot of influence from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is a movie about Ed Gein, kind of, and what he did. La Haine, as well, it’s about France and a modern French world, it’s about revolutionizing a shittty world thats polluted by bullshit. 

E: A lot of the riffs and music I write is for CIA, which is a much more politically based band. It talks about a lot of political situations going on in the world and in America. I still wanted to do a side project, which is this, which still talks about that stuff but more personal. I’ve seen some fucked up shit in my life and I use that a lot more in this band because I guess it’s more about the individual, but also how the individual reflects the world, if that makes sense. 

C: Funny enough, I remember me and Ed were sitting in a car once, and Ed says “you know, this band is kind of a joke band,” and then he goes, “well, that's not what I mean.” But I told him yes, it actually is kind of a joke band. The comedy is very much an overarching theme for the whole thing. We wouldn’t have songs called Ed Gein if we weren’t trying to make people laugh, it’s definitely to make people laugh but also to make people think, and I do wish some people thought about it more than they currently do. 

E: It’s sort of like irony and comedy. 

C: Absolutely, I totally agree! I agree with you. A dark comedy.  

H: Being an up and coming band in the CT hardcore punk scene, how is it being in the scene right now, the community that you’re in? 

E: For hardcore punk in general, its different. There are a lot of Hardcore, you know HxC, bands, like Wreckage, those types of bands, I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting, but that’s what’s been coming out of CT, that’s what CT is known for, not necessarily for punk. We have a lot of good bands, we have Gagu, Minor Inconveniences. 

C: Definitely Minor Inconveniences!

E: Fafa as well! And Zipper! Zipper is the band for CT.  But that’s like, those are the bands representing the scene right now.

C: Xur, as well. We grew up with them. We did our first show with them, they were very nice to work with and influenced us a lot. 

E: We hope, with Victimless Target, and CIA, and all those other bands, hopefully the state can also be more known for punk. Not to throw any shade to HxC, I have so much respect for what they do, what they are, what those bands represent, but the punk scene is definitely coming out and ripping.

H: Now what about the actual community, like, the state of the scene?

E: Regarding the state of the scene, the community itself has a lot of work to do. We have a long way to go. Especially with so much of the drama. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of it is warranted,  but we really need to get a grip. If we’re going to be a true unity, a moving force, we have to change some things up. It cannot happen like this. 

C: You know, fuck ups are gonna happen, but you have to get back on the saddle, make things right, and keep moving forward. It happens, shit happens. But, I agree with you, I absolutely agree with you. 

N: The drama has always been there. 

E: I know, I’ve only been here for less than two years in this state but so many bands have gone down for, you know what, and it’s ridiculous, it’s absolutely ridiculous. How are we gonna claim to stand for so many values and we keep having this shit happen? How are we going to have so many people compromise this movement that we have? We have these ideals but we can’t uphold them, because we are letting the wrong people in. You gotta know your friends.

C: It’s true for us in punk, our ideals are very anti-establishment, anti… anti-everything! But that doesn’t mean we can’t protect our community. We need to see good things and good people, we want to stand up for that. 

N: It’s a good and bad time for punk. With a lot of the Palestine rallies and anti-ICE rallies, obviously, there are more eyes on what we’re doing, there is more energy from the scene, and everybody wants music. Everybody wants fighters. 

E: There is good and bad to everything, but obviously we want to highlight the good things. Especially like, we are having a benefit show tomorrow. 

C: By the time this comes out it will already have happened. 

E: Right, exactly. It’s for a family in Danbury, the father was kidnapped by the state. We’re holding a show for them. That’s the good thing about the community, we mostly do try to help each other. Even when it gets to those points when it’s like everyone is at each other’s throats. We’re all human beings just trying not to like, die. 

C: Obviously, it can be very prominent that people are assholes. But it's also very prominent that people are trying to fight towards a good cause. Like Ed said, this is why we need to get our shit together, so we can fight better and fight harder. 

H: It is currently the end of June, what do you guys having coming up in the future? 

C: We actually have a lot of big things coming up in July and August. A lot of shows. August 1st, we have something big coming up, something very good and very vulgar. 

Eddie, Eugene, Noah, Connor

H: Where can everyone find Victimless Target?

C: Victimless Target on Bandcamp and Youtube. 

EG: And Victimless Target on Instagram! 

C: Definitely on Instagram! That’s where we share all of our news and pictures about shows, flyers, images from shows, all of that good stuff.