“My vison’s clear, my instinct strong
I am the vicious one”
From “Instinctive” by Hatebreed
The concept of the “drill sergeant” has a curious place in civilian culture. At times it feels like anyone who appears to be strict, is a disciplinarian, or yells a lot gets labeled “drill sergeant.” But being an actual drill sergeant always seemed deeper to me. It was someone who understood on a deep and empathic level the enormity of the task facing young people and who felt driven to help them prepare to meet the unfathomable emotional impact of what lies ahead. That person’s job is to both break down and build up an individual: they break down the parts of them that may interfere with combat readiness, while building up the parts that prepare them for the horrors of war. This strikes me as a job that requires equal parts compassion, insight, courage and discipline.
During our conversation for The Hardcore Humansim Podcast Hatebreed vocalist Jamey Jasta invoked the concept of “drill sergeant” in discussing his approach to his emotional well-being. For Jasta this meant looking deep within himself to build up the connection to his authentic self and breaking down the processes by which he suppressed his true emotions and perpetuated a “false self.” Jasta explained how his contemplation of this emotional processing informed Hatebreed’s new album, Weight of the False Self. “I needed to be a drill sergeant in my own ear, like I am on pretty much every record,” Jasta told me. “What I’m going through right now – it could definitely be an illusion, especially if I’m in a bad place. And if it’s not an illusion, if it is really real, can I face that? Can I be introspective enough? Can I be self critical enough to really get to the root of it and try to grow?”
For Jasta, introspection is a more general theme in Hatebreed’s music that has been present right from the beginning. In fact, Jasta described how many people felt that Hatebreed’s debut album, Satisfaction is the Death of Desire (1997) was anti-religion while he intended it as a call to action to look inward and confront intense negative emotion. “…the lyrics that were perceived as being anti-religious. When I looked at them as being a more about personal responsibility, not so much about the critique of established religion,” Jasta recalled. “I had to explain the line, the line says it all ‘How can you save me when you can’t save yourself?’ And I thought about that song when writing Weight Of The False Self, because I thought, let’s do more of looking inward.”
The key to Jasta’s emotional processing is what he describes as the distinction between “aimless negativity” and a more purposeful and focused release of negative emotion. Specifically, exploring negativity in a more unstructured way runs the risk of someone being overcome and unable to cope. In contrast, Jasta seeks to have his music point towards more purposeful processing. To be sure, this is a delicate process. Jasta reflected on the fact that like a drill sergeant, he has to be very careful about how far he pushes himself and encourages others to explore those dark feelings, as he is not necessarily sure which emotional experiences will break a person rather than build them up. “There’s only so much despair and only so much nihilism that you can accept and still have a way out…sometimes people hit bottom and they don’t come back. And there is some finality there,” he said. “And so, I’m always thinking when I’m trying to write a positive type of song. I always think if I was at rock bottom, what would I need to hear to just take that next step out and not accept the nihilism and the despair.”
One of the most dangerous things that can interfere with this delicate process of sorting out our intense emotions is when we feel pressured to think, feel or behave in a certain way. That process of conforming to the needs and expectations of others at the expense of our own emotional health is incredibly damaging. Jasta recalled feeling as though others had a very narrow view of what he would have been capable of being in his life. And then even when he achieved success with Hatebreed, people still attempted to put him in a box by claiming their music was negative and harmful because it explored dark emotional themes.”
“I remember being told … You can join the army, you can go get a nine to five, you can join a gang … I’m thinking really that’s it? Like this is what you’re giving me?” Jasta recalled. “And then when we would continue to sort of break through these ceilings, especially the ‘you’ll never get signed,’ ‘you’ll never play this venue,’ you know. So, we get to this height. And now what I’m looking at as a personal achievement people are looking at as this purveyor of negativity.”
Jasta feels that Hatebreed’s music was misconstrued partly because of the more general stigma of heavy music such as heavy metal and hardcore. As these genres tend to explore intense emotion such as anger, hatred, depression and suicidal thoughts, they are often mistakenly thought of as encouraging those feelings and emotions. He explained how the experience of heavy music, particularly in a communal setting like a concert, is an opportunity to connect with one’s authentic self. “I always felt like the perceived negativity was actually a positive thing, right?” he said. “Because if these people are at our show, having this, what I viewed as a positive release of negative energy, a cleansing sort of rite of passage, this physical thing, this confronting your fear, but also being unified in this sort of cleansing process of consensual violence, but with the idea that you also pick everyone else up at the end, and you walk out, and you’re a little bit better than you were when you walked in.”
When confronted with stereotypes and stigma, we have to be careful. We need to protect ourselves so that we can experience our own true feelings and connect with our authentic self. And yet at the same time, if we completely dismiss any opinion with which we disagree, we run the risk of suppressing certain parts of our emotional experience. Jasta balances these needs by being open to but cautious about feedback from others. “So, with Weight Of The False Self … I felt the pressure of having all these people … try to define me, to define my character define everything that I’ve done, or that I’m about to do… And then you have to make a choice to either believe them or to believe yourself. And for me, it’s always been … especially if it’s constructive … take it in. Consider it. And then be thankful that someone shared that with me, especially if it’s someone that I revere,” he explained. “If it’s someone I don’t know, I don’t take it personal. But I do consider it. And I say, ‘thank you.’ And I might not even tell them, ‘thank you,’ I might not even respond, especially if it’s on social media.
“But sometimes, you need that jolt, you need that kick in the *ss – even if it’s not true.”
Photo provided by Atom Splitter PR
