After years of making music Aaron Bruno may have finally broken through on the charts with AWOLNATION’s 2011 anthem, “Sail,” a mega-smash that spent an insane 79 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 (at the time the fourth-longest chart run ever), but he never forgot his teenage musical love.
After five AWOL albums, Bruno returned to that love, hardcore music, with the first Barbarians of California album, And Now I’m Just Gnashing My Teeth, released earlier this year.
Proving this is not just a fling, Bruno and his Barbarians band mates just released a new single, “Modern Fashion,” and are at the moment opening for The Deftones on their arena tour.
I spoke with Bruno about the differences between AWOL and The Barbarians, where his love of hardcore stems from, and much more.
Steve Baltin: I’m sure you’ve known The Deftones for many years.
Aaron Bruno: I don’t really, a side meeting with Chino [Moreno] at a festival that AWOL did with them, and just briefly saying hi and exchanging pleasantries. I don’t know them. The connection to The Deftones is more from the guitar player of the Barbarians, Eric Stanman, who also is the AWOL engineer.
Baltin: You were saying that you’re excited to do the heaviest tour you’ve ever done with heavy music. I’m sure it’s such a different energy than you’re used to when you’re playing Barbarian stuff.
Bruno: It is. With AWOLNATION we’ve always had a tendency to lean into this heavy spirit that I can’t shake because I grew up a hardcore kid. And you can’t quit the hardcore soul that’s in here for anyone out there who knows what that feels like. So, when we would tour sometimes, we would play almost too heavy at times with AWOL. And I could see half of the crowd, I don’t know if it’s half the crowd, but I could see a certain percentage of the crowd thinking like, “Okay, enough. This is fun, but you’ve gone a little too far. This is getting sonically a little too X -rated. Let’s bring it back to the more melodic stuff that you’re most known for.” But then shortly after some of these sets, I would talk to a lot of people who would say, “Man you should really do a hardcore record or something heavier for the next AWOL.” I always incorporate a little bit of that but now with this outlet with Barbarians of California I have this way to exercise that or scratch that itch and I think that’ll make me better as a songwriter for both AWOL and Barbarians all at the same time. So, when we go to play these shows, when we would do arena tours or even big festivals, whether it was Coachella here or more recently, we played Nova Rock in Austria. It’s the first one that comes to mind. With the AWOL stuff, we would get into the heavy parts. That’s most fun for us, but not necessarily as relatable as some of the known songs. I’m most known for obviously “Sai” and “Run” and those are both heavy songs. So, I’m lucky that it’s not completely out of nowhere.
Baltin: Every great artist, from Bowie to Joni Mitchell to Tom Waits to on and on has all gone through multiple styes. That’s normal as an artist.
Bruno: Yeah, and I think it’s the right way if you’re going to continue to grow. I talked to you during the beginning phases of this when everything was canceled with the lockdowns and all that, and you and I discussed when people would be ready to go back to shows. And if I’m to try to find a way to look at that time with the glass half full, which can be hard to do sometimes, but my mom’s a very optimistic person, so I try to follow her lead on this. But I was able to create not only a new AWOL record, but this whole Barbarians project, because I had the time. A lot of people froze. I saw that forced time home as an opportunity to do more music than I ever had. So, it almost became like a double album — the AWOLNATION record and this Barbarians album that ended up coming out.
Baltin: Are there people you’ve spoken to or admired for the way that they’ve been able to handle multiple projects at once?
Bruno: Luckily, I’m not a tourist in this genre because I started that way and then fell on my face multiple times before AWOL took off. This feels, in a lot of ways, more comfortable, like if you ever played little league baseball, when you go find a little league glove and you put it back on and it feels really fun and exciting and it fits like a glove, as the saying goes. So, the only huge difference really is that I’m surrounded by elite musicians now and recording technology. I knew I wanted to do this over the years, but the time wasn’t ever right. And now it is. But I would liken what you’re saying or parallel this to a bit of an inversion of that concept, which was when Beck made Sea Change, that was huge for me for him to do an acoustic style record with Nigel [Goodrich]
. He made that record with him, and that was such a huge record for me and impactful and shocking and courageous. Not that I’m saying what I’m doing is courageous at all, maybe it’s a bit shocking, but just flipping it up. But again, I didn’t do this to shock people. I’m just scratching an itch that’s always been there, but now I feel accomplished enough with AWOL, five records in, fives a lot of albums. I’ve been threatening for that to be the last AWOLNATION record. It probably won’t be. I already have a bunch of new song ideas for that stuff. But I guess I felt maybe I had earned the right to do this project. And of course, in the beginning, we did that Troubadour show. And I thought, if we play this show, The Barbarians, if we play this show and everybody just has their phones out to film, the AWOL guy trying something different, that wouldn’t have been a preferred outcome to me. But instead, it felt like a brand-new thing. People were doing stage dives and singing along, kind of like, going back to some of the memorable shows of my childhood, where I got to see some great hardcore bands in the 90s, and the energy felt similar to that. The only difference was that I was conducting the night. And there’s a moment on the song we have called “Where Are The Punks,” where there’s this MF ‘er sing -along deal and I thought,” I think they’re gonna sing along if I pass the mic right here but if they don’t that’s gonna be a bummer because there’ll be no vocal.” I threw the mic in the air and the whole place screamed along and I thought, “We could have never played another note, and it would have been all worth it just for that one sing-along.” Then it was followed by a couple of front flips and people grabbing my shirt and it just felt right.
Baltin: Growing up for you, what was the favorite hardcore show?
Bruno: The first one I ever saw was at the Los Palmas Theater, which doesn’t exist anymore in Hollywood. I was really into punk rock, healthy dose of earlier Bad Religion, Rancid, Operation IV, Minor Threat, which is considered a hardcore band in a lot of ways. I loved Nirvana, at the time, and all the same stuff other people were listening to, I guess. I always love pop music and hip-hop and metal, but then someone’s like, “Hey, do you want to go to a hardcore show?” I didn’t know what that was. I didn’t understand what the community was or anything about it other than someone invited me to a show. I went, I was 16, this is 1995. I saw Strife, Snapcase, Undertow, Ignite, and a band called Palefire. I remember walking into this room, and it was completely sold out, packed. No security. I had been to a couple punk shows and I had seen Bad Religion at the Santa Monica Civic. And while it was a punk rock show, it still had the barrier, security guard, this and that. But when I walked in the Los Palmas Theater, it was like there was no chaperone. It’s like there were no parents, and it was like a teen center or something. People were just sitting on the stage, photography kids with cool cameras walking down, taking shots. Everybody kind of knew each other. And it was something I could tell I wanted to be part of, because it seemed really cool and underground.