Excerpt from transcription, audio
recorded on Thursday, July 17, 2025
David: I'm David. I do vocals for Isolate and drums for Crawling Back, Blood Money, TowerLord, and Born to Suffer.
Ameer: So how did you get into the scene in the first place?
David: I started going to shows, probably 2016. I went to my first couple shows here. I used to visit in the summers. My mom lives here, so I’d be around then.
Yeah, I’d go see death metal bands and stuff. I was a big metalhead when I was a kid. I went to a show to see Four Year Strong, and Story So Far and Terror happened to be on the bill too. And that emo band—Have Mercy—you know that band?
Ameer: No, I don't know.
David: They're a very whiny, cringey emo band from back in the day. It was them, Story So Far, and then Terror. I was there for every band that wasn’t Terror, and then I saw Terror, and I was like, holy shit. Around then, I also met some kids who went to shows here at Walter's when it was still open, The Clinic, and that kind of stuff. I didn’t go to those shows much because I wasn’t here often. But yeah, that’s how I got into going to shows in Houston. It was mostly death metal, and then I saw Terror, so I started going to hardcore shows.
Then I met Alex and started Blood Money. That’s when I became really into the scene—local stuff and local hardcore specifically. Before being in a band, I’d go to all kinds of shows—grindcore, weird stuff—but after starting a band, I kinda stopped going to those because hardcore was just way better. And at that time, hardcore was at a real low, pre-COVID. After that was when we started Blood Money.
Then I met Thomas. I think it was Josh Delgado who told me—because I knew Thomas, he was just around—and Josh told me Thomas was really good at guitar. I was doing Blood Money for a while, but I was trying to do something else. So I asked him, “Do you wanna do a band?” And he was like, yeah, and sent me a link to a Google Drive of the Crawling Back demo. And I was like, oh, you already have all this? What the fuck, this is sick. I remember listening to his vocals, like, what the fuck, this sounds like punk Left Behind. It’s just sick.
Thomas and I are both really into that band. That was a big band for me when I was first getting into hardcore.
Ameer: So what, just in the first place, attracted you to everything? The scene, heavy music, all of it. What was the appeal to you?
David: I don't know. It probably has something to do with my childhood, bro. [Laughter]
Ameer: Doesn't it always?
David: Yeah. I mean, why does anybody get into music? It makes you feel a certain way, whether it's fucking, like, cringey, whiny, emo music or hardcore or whatever else. It makes you feel some kind of way. Yeah. I just always connected with music first. You know?
Like, I didn't have a lot of friends until I was in high school really. So I was just kinda by myself just listening to music. I got introduced to Iron Maiden and Alice in Chains when I was, like, ten or eleven by one of my mom's boyfriends. He was cool. He played in, like, a cover band. I thought he was so sick. If I just met him now completely out of context I probably think he was the lamest dude.
But when I was like 10, he was so rad. He showed me a bunch of music. I put like a bunch of it on my iPod. And that's how I got into heavier stuff. I grew up at a time when Hot Topic core was the thing. It was kind of the downslide of it. It was like 2010, 2013 when I was kind of into that stuff.
Yeah. Like the Hot Topic core and, like, Deathcore and bands like Carnifex that kind of shit. Probably started listening to hardcore bands at some point in there. I remember listening to Backtrack, like, when I was still listening to, like, A Day to Remember.
Ameer: Yeah, I get that, like, kind of getting into hardcore because it's, like, sprinkled in there with your, like, regular listening.
David: It was kinda sprinkled in. And then I saw terror. Right. And I was, like, this is the coolest thing I've thing I've ever seen in my life. And it was just kinda over for me. Yeah. That's it. It's just kinda slowly took over everything else, you know?
And even nowadays, like, I only listen to it. A lot of my friends that I'm in bands and stuff with, like, they don't really listen to hardcore all the time. I listen to hardcore every single day. it's just what I like.
Ameer: Have your listening habits affected your creative process at all?
David: Oh, yeah. For sure. I'm very, very influenced by my favorite bands and stuff that I listen to a lot. I think that it's very true, and a lot of people have said it before that the best way to make good hardcore is to be as derivative as possible. So, yeah, very, very influenced by like— it's a long list. Bands like, you know, Outburst, Backtrack, a lot of New York bands, a lot of California bands, like Soul Search, Minority Unit, Terror, of course. But Terror is not really a big influence on my music, I would say. Not for myself, but definitely Alex.
Ameer: So you have been in the scene for quite a while, you'd say?
David: Yeah. I've been going to shows since I moved here in 2018 permanently, after I graduated high school. So since then—since, like, 2018.
Ameer: So what has changed that you have seen? Any major things?
David: People are a lot friendlier. Shows are a lot more chill in some aspects. People used to be more violent, especially before I started going—kind of on the downswing of violence at shows. That was more what Alex told me about when he first started going.
But yeah, now it’s a lot more inviting and welcoming, a lot bigger, and more diverse as far as the kinds of people coming. That’s just the effect of new people coming in. Hardcore has been a big trend the last few years—I think it’s kinda going down soon.
A lot more people, a lot more inviting. I used to go to shows, and before I started a band, nobody talked to me. I didn’t have a lot of friends before I was in a band. When I first started going to shows, it was clear who was friends with who, and not many people would talk to you.
I was friends with a guy named Jake Cashion—he’s the frontman of Blind now. He’s from here originally, I think he lives in Austin now. Do you know a band called Bitter taste?
Ameer: No.
David: They were kinda the big scary beatdown band. It was them, Seventh Realm, and Bayou when I first started going to shows. Jake was in that band, so I kinda knew him. And who else… Isaiah, who’s in Cable, the bassist. You know Bam? She’s vocalist of Sugar, she would talk to me.
I remember the people who actually talked to me back then. Ging, the photographer—big bald dude, red beard. Kinda looks like Alex but taller, with a skull tat. Maybe a couple others I can’t remember. But anyway, yeah, the two main things are it’s bigger and a lot more inviting than it used to be.
Generally, it’s a lot easier to make new friends at shows. People will talk to you. I try to give anybody the time of day because it didn’t used to be like that. Especially with band dudes—you’d get the cool guy act, the cold shoulder thing. It was weird and standoffish. So I try to be as friendly as I can.
Ameer: Your band, Isolate, played at White Oak recently. Can you tell me about that? How did that feel for you guys?
David: It was cool. Definitely nerve-wracking. I'd never been in front of that many people before. I had to kill a whiskey double just to level myself out a little bit. But it was fun. Honestly, I would have way cooler feelings about that show if there wasn't a barricade. I don't fuck with that at all. It goes against everything hardcore is about to me—because it's about all of us. It's connecting. That's why I want people to come up front so much.
When people started learning the words, that was the coolest thing ever to me. I wrote most of the EP with that in mind, trying to simplify lines so it’s easier to learn and easier for people to wanna sing along. Using fewer words to get a concept across, you know? That kind of thing.
It was cool, though. Like I said, the main cool part was being up there with that many people in the crowd, and being up there with all my friends. I’ve said this before: there are a lot of shows Isolate’s played that I haven’t been super into, personally, as far as the bands on the bill. Because I'm very specific about the kind of band I want us to be and the kinds of shows I wanna play.
Ameer: What is that type of band?
David: A hardcore band. Yeah, just a hardcore band. And I don't think the big box venue thing is super conducive to hardcore. But I take heavy inspiration from Scott Vogel, Terror. Those guys will play any tour with anybody. And they're right because if there's one kid at one show that didn't know, which was me ten years ago. That matters.
Ameer: So this gonna be my last question. Do you have any future plans that you can share?
David: Future plans—we're doing an EP for Isolate that is tracked and being mixed.
We're doing an EP for Crawling Back that's tracked and being mixed. Did that all this month. We’re doing a Tower Lord single and a Blood Money single for the Texas portion of a split that Yetzer Hara Records is doing for an immigration fund. That will all be coming out within the next couple months.
We're gonna do an Isolate EP release on September 6.
