Anyone who regularly reads There's Nothing To Do Here! probably knows of my admiration for the participants in Roanoke's mid-90s power violence/noisecore scene. In an era when most of the valley thought Smashing Pumpkins was edgy, a small group of guys were making extreme hardcore music that was well known around the globe — at least among extreme hardcore fans.
Jason Hodges was one of the instigators. He helped found Suppression (Roanoke's flagship PV band) and continues to play in a two-piece version of the group today. Though he's since moved to Richmond, Hodges continues to play and release music on his label, CNP Records.
Did you grow up in the Roanoke area?
Yes.
Which high school did you go to?
Patrick Henry.
Where you going there when you got into this kind of music?
Everything started my senior year, pretty much.
I ask everyone this. What's the first concert you ever remember going to?
I saw KISS in 1978. It was my 4th birthday present. I barely remember it. I remember the flying guitar and fire and blood. I loved KISS when I was a kid.
Is that what got you into playing?
It was kind of that. I never took any lessons. My friend wanted me to play bass in his band and taught me two Iron Maiden songs. That was the only lessons I ever took. That was a band called Shellshocked that I did in junior high school. We just did Ramones, Sex Pistols, Metallica and Anthrax covers. We were just having fun, pretty much.
How did you end up going from that to extreme hardcore music? And in Roanoke of all places?
I started buying records, and then I started reading underground music magazines and seeing ads talking about bands, old DRI and stuff like that. I ordered it and started hearing fast bands that were existing at the time.
So you mail-ordered everything.
Yeah, totally. Slap-a-Ham Records and stuff like that. That's just how I got started on music, and I kept finding out about other bands through that.
Was Daily Grind the first real band that put you on the road to what you ended up doing with Suppression?
Yeah, pretty much. Me and this guy Hog, we were just good friends. He wanted to play more metal, and I wanted to play more early hardcore, fast grindcore stuff. We just put up with each other and got it together, had a good repoire. We eventually found a friend of his to play guitar. It just got kind of weird, and then we found Dave at a Psycho show at the Iroquois years ago. We were talking about some of the same bands and started playing together.
And you changed the name to Suppression at that point?
Yeah.
How do you write those types of songs?
Uh … I dunno, it was either this big page of lyrics, and you'd write something fast over it, or you'd have something really fast and put a bunch of lyrics over it.
Did you write the lyrics?
Yeah, I wrote all the music and lyrics, pretty much. This was '92, when I was in my senior year.
Do you remember where you played your first show at?
Had to have been the Iroquois.
Do you remember the types of reaction you got early on?
Everybody was friends at the time, and we were all playing records for each other. Some kids would be in the back going, "What? What the fuck?!" But all of our friends were hanging out just enjoying it. I wasn't the biggest Swank fan, but even those kids would go to our shows and be cool about it.
I guess that was when Shirley still owned the Iroquois. She seems to have been pretty cool about letting different style bands play there.
Yeah, we actually had a band that got banned there three different times, and we just kept changing the name.
I've heard that first demo off the discography. Did y'all record that with Chuck Crush?
No. The first demo was something we just did on a boombox. I would have not put that out, personally, but then when I heard it, I was like, "Hey, there's actually some pretty good songs on here. We should have worked on them more."
How did you end up getting linked in with the larger national scene and getting picked up by labels and such?
We would just send our records to the usual, "Flipside" and "Maximum Rock'n'roll." Back then there were a lot of smaller zines too. We'd get reviews in zines, and they'd talk about bands like Extreme Noise Terror. I'd be like, "Shit!" so I'd order that stuff too.
What got you into the power violence? Do you remember some of the bands you were listening to?
It started out with Hellnation and Assuck and stuff like that. Then I heard Neanderthal and Infest, stuff like that. Crossed Out. That pretty much changed everything.
Walters recommended some Hellnation record for me.
I pretty much started out with their earlier 7-inches, before they ever put out an LP. That was the stuff that had a pretty big impact on me.
Did you guys ever do tours outside of Roanoke?
Yeah yeah, definitely. In 95 we toured with Eucharist from Richmond. We did a US tour with those guys, out to California and back. That was amazing, and then the next year we did the exact same thing with Asshole Parade from Gainesville Fla. Another US tour. It was fun. We got knocked over in Seattle. That was one of my favorite memories.
What do you mean, "knocked over"?
It was just so insane the entire band got their equipment knocked over. We had to set it up again.
Awesome. Did people ever comment on the fact you were from Roanoke?
It never was that big a deal, really. Cuz it seemed like there were so many bands at the time, all over North Carolina, everywhere. There were all these crazy underground bands. Richmond had the same thing. It didn't seem like a big deal.
I've made the comment before that Roanoke seems like it's usually three years behind. But Suppression was right there at the forefront of that movement.
We just keep up with stuff, y'know? We're big music fans, we're addicted to it. Always ordering it, magazines, anything.
Do you have a favorite record you've put out?
I like the stuff we're doing nowadays better than anything. I think the first 7-inch we did a couple of years ago is our best stuff.
Chuck Crush told me a pretty funny story a few weeks ago. He was telling me how y'all came in to the studio and did the first song, and there was this explosion of noise and then you stopped. And he thought you messed up, so he was getting ready for another soundcheck, and someone was like, "No, that was the whole song."
I love that man. I haven't seen him in a few years. I need to catch up with him.
Any particular memories of recording with him that stand out?
Oh, every one of them, man. Especially when we started bringing in gas tanks. We started out just playing bass, drums, guitars and stuff. He used to be on Memorial. That was where we did all of our early recordings on reel-to-reels. It was amazing. Then when he moved to Elm, we started bringing in … I mean, we hooked up mics to a bong once. We had broken walkie-talkies and gas tanks we'd mic up, and just run them through effects pedals. We started adding those as extra instruments.
At some point you added on a noise guy. Bill, I think?
We added him on before that. He came on after the first year, cuz he had this broken amp that made all these crazy sounds. He'd put wrenches on guitars. It was all really high squealy sounds, just great stuff. When we started doing noise stuff, he was already out of the band.
Why did you end up leaving Roanoke?
Pretty much the last tour we did, the guy playing guitar was filling in. We got him like a month before, because the guitarist quit right before we went on tour. That was this guy George, who moved from Boston to Roanoke. Our original singer Davey didn't want to go on tour about a month before, either. So we had to replace him. We got this guy Chris from Richmond to sing for us. He'd filled in on drums for Hog the year before, when Hog couldn't make it. This is crazy. That's when we did the tour, and me, Chris and Hog were going to do the band in Richmond. I moved to Richmond and it didn't really happen. I just gave up on it for a while, and then I met Ryan, I guess in 2000. It's been four years now. It's just a two-person band now.
Someone - I forgot who - told me he ran into someone from Europe that was just amazed that he knew you. Did you ever tour overseas?
Only as the two-piece. We've been all over the east coast and Canada and Europe so far.
How do you release your records now?
Pretty much on my label, CNP (Creamy Neon Prostate) Records. Under Radar Records put out the CD recently.
I think I've seen the CNP webpage.
It started out as a tape label. Pretty much when we first started putting out everything, it was Chaotic Noise Productions, just all cassettes. We call it CNP now, and changed up the acronym every once in a while.
Do you feel like you have a legacy or anything?
I don't know. I feel like I've just been learning the whole time. I'm more happy with what's going on these days. It's more interesting to me.