From Within Newsletter #12
An interview with Owen Viles of C4/Burning Lord/With Hate
It’s been a while but we are back with another interview. To be transparent, this interview was done months ago along with some others for Phased Out #2. Unfortunately, my phone died and with it all the interviews and other parts of the zine so that will not be coming anytime soon… Thankfully Owen still had this interview in his texts for the masses viewing pleasure. C4’s 2025 LP “Payback’s A Bitch” is without a doubt one of the best releases of last year, but aside from that I do think it will be a record hardcore heads worldwide will look back on with fondness in the years to come. I genuinely still listen to it all the time and it has not gotten old yet and still makes me audibly lol at how insane and hard the lyrics/mosh is. Shout out to C4, shout out to the OSU classic “Me and the Boys” and shoutout to Owen for doing this.
WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:
All Out War - Truth in the Age of Lies
Jump Ball - Demo
Justification - Demo (coming soon on From Within…)
Temple Guard - Citadel in Flames
Fallen King Youtube Channel
Before we get into the interview I would like to plug a new zine I’ll be doing called HALLOWED GROUND. I’m reaching out to the scene worldwide and asking that you create a 1 pager (can be front and back) about your favorite venue from your scene. This can be about anything you want from the history of the venue or just a specific show. Feel free to swag the page out or just write words down on a piece of paper and scan it… Dealer’s choice. Please email the submissions to fromwithinrecords@gmail.com with the subject “Hallowed Ground”.
What’s up, introduce yourself and let us know whatever is on your mind currently
Hello everyone I’m Owen. I play guitar in With Hate, bass in Burning Lord and Chaos Cross and now Wreckage (I think) and I sing in C4. I’m sitting on the couch watching the Celtics pregame show with Brian Scalabrine and I’m currently thinking about how I met him once.
I had no idea you were linking up with Wreckage, when did that happen?
Well there’s a revolving door of people that play in Wreckage and long story short I’m the A-guy bassist now. I’ve played a few shows with them in the past and it’s a lot of fun. They are the best guys to hang out with and my CT squad. Surprisingly challenging songs on bass.
Dope fellas…To get straight into it, I wanna say roughly a year before “Payback’s A Bitch” was released you described what the artwork was going to be to me and I believe you’re exact words were “it’s going to be a mad scientist with a huge erection breaking through a brick wall.” While I did believe you immediately, seeing it come to life was nothing short of amazing. For the readers, please break down the inspo for the art and how it ties into the name of the record.
Well I knew I wanted the artwork to stylistically kind of like old Japanese records like Outo “No Way Out” or some of those S.O.B records or really anything Tom has done or in the vein of old thrash records like Whiplash “Power and Pain.” I’m a comic book head too so I was inspired by Wolverine breaking out of the Weapon X compound when thinking of the artwork. Then I had Jeff from the Slads do the artwork and it came to life immacutely. I guess it seems like it builds on the first record. First record is too silly. I hate the lyrics, I pretty much just wrote stuff just to get a laugh out of people and that’s true for the music in some instances on Chaos Streaks too. This record, though still humorous, I feel like I actually have something to say in the songs and I’m trying to deal with personal issues. I always saw the guy on the cover as the straight edge skinhead guy in a few years. He’s not a bald carefree young stallion anymore - he’s overgrown, weathered and insane and he has his dick out and he’s back to burn everything down. People doubted this record would happen and that only fueled me. That’s part of where the name comes from I guess.
That’s awesome. Yeah I was going to say, and I mean this with all due respect, every time I listen to the record there’s something new I notice that makes me audibly lol. You kind of mentioned this, but it definitely still is “funny” at times cause the lyrics are insane, but it doesn’t come off jokey or anything which is a hard balance to strike. I feel like a lot of people don’t know this, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like you’re lowkey a secret weapon for the bands you’re in and are a huge part when it comes to writing in all of them. I think it’s not hard to hear that on payback you guys leaned into the metal side of things a lot more. Was than just a natural transition when writing or was it intentional to lean into that side of things more?
Thanks! Depending on the band I do usually contribute a lot. I’ve always liked being part of the writing process. Even before all these bands when I joined Vantage Point I wanted to start contributing immediately. It’s hard for me to feel equal ownership over a band if I’m not writing in it. I feel like when you write songs for a band you put a piece of your soul into them. Like something that spawned out of my brain is now streaming on Spotify. Writing in With Hate is a joint effort between me and Doug, Burning Lord is a lot of me writing the riffs and songs but then edited as a group and the new C4 record was pretty much all me writing it. Before I even sat down to write I knew I wanted this record to have more thrash/crossover influences in it. I’m probably just as much a metalhead as I am a hardcore kid so I wanted to write something that ninth grade me would truly be proud of. I wanted to emulate 80s stuff like Broken Bones FOAD or AF Cause For Alarm or Straw Dogs in that we were a straightforward hardcore band writing our thrash record, even though we might not sound a whole lot like those bands. Plus, it helped that our friend Jake had just joined on guitar. He’s a seriously gifted guitar player and excels at playing that NWOBHM/hair metal type guitar playing and I knew I wanted this record to do his playing justice. But I didn’t want it to be full blown thrash - I still wanted it to be a hardcore record and sound like C4 at the end of the day. But I wanted to write the most extreme record that we could. And there needed to be double bass. Too much of it.
Speaking of double bass, another huge part of this record is the fact that DFJ recorded drums on it. While rockstar idolization in hardcore is horrendous, it’s hard to deny the impact that he’s had on hardcore as a whole. How did him playing on the record come together?
Well our first drummer was on his way out of the band and Sean became the de-facto drummer. He was knee deep in Final Gasp at this time and I just think with all the bands he was doing and the fact that he works 60+ hours a week regularly he didn’t have the capacities to write a full length record. He claims that it’s because “he wouldn’t have sounded good on that” or something of the tune but anybody who has heard Sean play drums knows that couldn’t be further from the truth. He’s unbelievable. But anyway - it was really Doug’s idea to get in contact with him because we wanted to do this record either way. I was pretty shocked that he agreed immediately. I mean at the time to me he’s like this legend and we’re just a bunch of dorks. He wasn’t interested in playing shows but he gladly wrote and played on the record with us and the writing process was honestly awesome. It was me him and Doug in the practice space and the writing went seemlessly. Granted I had written pretty much 90% of it myself but we finished writing in like less than a month. It didn’t feel like he was doing us a favor - he was excited and enthusiastic to do the record with us. We’d always wanna practice and me and him would talk about the record all the time. I knew him prior to Payback’s a Bitch somewhat but this record is really what made us friends. He’s a legit awesome guy. He’s a fucker in the studio though. He’ll make you play the same part 30 times over. And if a fly farts in the room he’ll hear it in the booth.
I mean considering the masterpieces he has written that doesn’t shock me, but yeah he’s is an insanely nice guy. The last time I got to see you guys was at FYA which was amazing. I know you recently played LDB, and no dick ride, but a few people texted me simply saying “C4 should have headlined.” How do you think the set went for you guys?
I thought it was sick as fuck honestly. I didn’t really know what to expect but the entire room was pandemonium. People flying all over the place, moshing ignorantly. Someone I know dislocated their finger and it was bent all the way back. I looked out into the crowd and it looked like prison riots.
It had to be the fella Marley. He told me his shit was turned upside down, he set it back, then dove back off the stage and dislocated it again lmao. What else do you guys have planned currently?
Hmmmm let’s see. We have United Blood in a couple weeks followed swiftly by the Straight Ahead reunion. Then we got rebirth fest and then we got More Reality fest in June. Then we’re playing United and Strong in England in August. Not sure what else, we’re trying to play as much as we can while doing our other bands. Trying to play as much as we can with C4 though while the excitement is fresh. Pretty much all the shows have been great since the record came out so I’m really happy about it. Really considering writing another record. Won’t be for a good long while but these shows have been inspiring. But also I’m fine with ending it here - on a strong note. On other fronts….Burning Lord is writing LP2 after about two and a half years of writers block. We got like 4 or 5 songs right now but I got a bunch more in the belt of the m60 ready to penetrate the scene. The new songs are real good and I think this record will be better than Arcane. With Hate I think wants to write a new record but we don’t know what that’ll be and we’ve been so busy with other bands that we haven’t really found time to get the ball rolling. I’m in this other band Chaos Cross that’s working on our debut LP. We had an EP come out a while ago but we only played Boston a couple times and play very sparsely. I don’t think we’ve played since early 2023. But this record I think is gonna be real good. It’s like heavier metallic hardcore like all out war and dying breed but it’s got a lot of death metal and black metal influence to it. I know that sounds like a turn off to a lot of people but just trust your uncle on this one.
My word you got a busy year ahead. This is just out of pure curiosity. In general for the Boston scene what do you think the ratio is for actual hardcore kids compared to the weird bizarro kids is? I feel like after covid every single scene was hit this shit and hardcore has entered this horrendous realm of being mixed with social media constantly
Not any crazier than any other city tbh. The weirdos fill out the room. In every batch of TikTok mutants though there’s one of us being held hostage. Everyone else makes good edge of the pit fodder for Alfredo and Ethan.
Alright last one. You got people like Pete Judge constantly trying to shit on the food in Boston. I’m personally sick of people from New York and how they view food. It’s time to defend your city…
Love Pete Judge like a brother but you cannot talk food with him. He is suffocating on his own farts. If you handed him cow manure on a bulky roll he’d try to tell you it’s a Queens staple. Let’s assume for a minute though he’d be willing to break out of this delusion and give the local cuisine a chance (he isn’t). The Boston area has a lot of great food. Kinda like Long Island has the north shore and the south shore we have our own. I’m from the North Shore (Essex County) where the regional stuff is the three way roast beef sandwich and Greek pizza. The best places to get roast beef are Kelly’s (which also has an amazing cheeseburger), Jim’s Roast Beef on Cabot Street in Beverly, Londi’s of Peabody and Bill and Bob’s roast beef (also recommend the pastrami sandwich). Greek pizza is a thing on the north shore too - which I would recommend Giovanni’s on Lake Street in Peabody. On the south shore we got south shore bar pizza. Our go to place is town spa - that’s where our gang has all of our outings. We’re there all the time. Another big thing is fried seafood. My go to place on the north shore is Woodman’s of Essex or Essex Seafood. Get a fried shrimp plate or a cold Lobster Roll. If you like Chinese you can go to Kowloon (that’s the famous north shore spot) or my personal recommendation which is New Hong Kong in Oak Square in Brighton. Take out only spot that has huge portions, combos and the best General Gaus I’ve ever had. I let this answer get away from me but I could fill a book about good places to eat here. You gotta be willing to go out of the city a little bit away from the tourists and hipsters and transplants to find the staples.
Actual lol at the beginning. I love him but fuck Pete Judge and his Emmy! We can wrap it up there. Thank you for doing this, I look forward to seeing C4 at Rebirth and more importantly chilling with you guys. Any last words?
I always look forward to chilling with your squad whenever we travel. Last words let’s see. 2026 might be quiet release wise from us but expect multiple super massive releases from all of us at the same time in 2027. Stop dick eating and be your own person. Start a band and play as much as you can and make something epic. Everything will go by fast so don’t blink.
ME AND THE BOYS:
My boys eat trash off the side of the street
That’s how we live, potatoes and beef
You got a problem, shut your fuckin’ hole
It’s my platoon and we don’t need to be told
Me and the boys
Me and the boys
Me and the boys
Oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi
One, two, C4
Me and the boys parked on the couch
Me and thе boys just hangin’ out
Me and the boys, dickhead crеw
These are my boys and we fuckin’ hate you
Bring it down
Yeah
One more thing
We’re C4
PEACE!