Together since 1995, the four members of Disengage continue to blaze a path from their home base of Cleveland through the Midwest and beyond, playing a myriad of unique venues each year, drawing out a loyal following without the aid of any substantial radio play or marketing dollars. The band is just another heavy rock phenomenon that attracts more listeners via the Internet than across FM airwaves or music television, unwilling to let a barren mainstream landscape foil its quest. A touring band in the truest sense of the term, the four members joyfully pack themselves and their gear into various oversized four-wheeled machines, eking out a living on little more than the euphoria of playing at high volumes for mainly club audiences. The year 2000 saw the release of the band's second album Obsessions Become Phobias on the potent independent label Man's Ruin and earlier this year they landed a first place prize for Best Hard Rock Band at the 2001 Cleveland Free Times Music Awards. Though presently on a label known primarily for pumping out a wealth of relevant modern stoner and doom rock, Disengage toe the blurry line dividing punk and metal like a drunken sailor wandering the Red Light district. The 11 songs found on Obsessions Become Phobias reveal a brooding intensity and visceral rawness that festers with every incision. Listen and feel the pressing heat of "Angel's Night" or the churning ecstasy of "Tarantella." Recently the band has been gearing up for an August tour, fine-tuning a sound and vision heavy on writhing guitars and relentless anarchy. They were featured on the main stage at the MESH festival and will be on the bill alongside Clutch, Boy Sets Fire, and Converge at Hessfest 2 in the Cleveland Agora parking lot July 29th. I caught up with drummer Jon Morgan and singer Jason Byers via e-mail to discuss their upcoming tour, new material in the works, burning buildings, and a little evolution.

How did the MESH festival (5/12/01 in Cuyahoga Falls, OH) go for you guys?

Jon Morgan: The show was pretty good. The weather was horrible but a lot of people made it out to see us although it was mostly a Mushroomhead crowd. It was fun but we're a little more comfortable with the small stages. We like people in our faces and a little more interaction.

How are plans for the West Coast swing coming along?

Jon: Great. We're setting up shows as we speak for the whole month of August. We plan on going through the Midwest to the west coast, up the coast and back. The tail end of the tour will take us to a few east coast shows and up into Canada for a couple dates. We're extremely excited to get in to some of these cities and just get out on the road in general.

Have you cemented many dates or is a lot of the tour still up in the air?

Jon: Our routing is pretty well set with most of the shows being confirmed. We're still waiting on a few but at this point I think we're in good shape.

Have you been working on any new material recently, and if so, have you had a chance to play any of it live?

Jon: We have been writing for a while now. We don't plan on doing any of the new stuff live until we go out on tour. Well, we're thinking of setting up a surprise show at a friend's club in Akron to do a test run of all the new stuff. We're planning on doing three new ones on tour, plus some stuff that most people outside of Cleveland have never heard. We're just going to rotate in different songs at various shows to mix it up a little.

Are there any particular cities you're especially excited about playing?

Jon: We're real excited to get back to the West Coast, in particular Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. Toronto will be fun too. In all reality, we have fun wherever we go. It's nice to see new places and meet new people. We'll be the same idiots in Lawrence, Kansas, as we'll be in Los Angeles. We keep ourselves amused at all times so it's always fun.

Jon: In my case, the songs are a way of letting out frustrations and venting both physically and creatively. I don't need to go to any place to let it out, it just comes out naturally. Better to let it out that way than by more destructive means.

Regarding the rampant monkey imagery, are you trying to say that the human race needs to take a few steps back to avoid destroying itself with all this high technology?

Jason Byers: The primate imagery originally came from the lyrics of "Every Sunday." The song deals with the belief of evolution by blowing it out of proportion in order to compete with all religions, and racial prides. With or without technology the human race will eventually destroy itself. I'm not a tech head so I think of other ways to embarrass the human race. Since writing "Every Sunday" we've had many references to primates lyrically and graphically.

Being a New Englander, I've only heard of the notorious "Devil's Night" through the street-gothic action movie The Crow. Can you explain a bit about this Detroit phenomenon and what you're trying to say with the song "Angel's Night"? Is it simply a description or does it go a step further?

Jason: In Pittsburgh, where I grew up, Devil's Night seemed to be a pretty big deal. Toilet papering, egging, and lighting dog shit on fire was about as extreme as it would get. Detroit used the night as an excuse to burn some of its garbage. After spending some time in Detroit, it's easy to see why arson was a popular activity. There are plenty of dilapidated homes, businesses, apartment buildings, and broken down cars to burn. Angel's Night is actually a campaign that the city of Detroit started to try and stop the destruction of run-down property during Devil's Night. The song "Angel's Night" is about the citizens of Detroit disregarding their city's campaign and torching everything they can get their hands on. I think of the song as a solution to Detroit's problem. The city needs to be gutted and rebuilt before the Angel's Night campaign will mean anything.

You've received plenty of positive feedback about your sound, with the press linking you to bands such as Black Flag, Soundgarden, and Tool. Do you take these comparisons as compliments or do you feel that they somehow trivialize what you're trying to accomplish as a band?

In a Cleveland Free Times article, Jason is quoted as saying "the way the music industry is now, it seems you can choose money or respect." Describe the circumstances that would have to exist in order for Disengage to sign to a major label, and would you feel as though you would be forfeiting your freedom as independent artists?

Jon: I think there are good people for Disengage, or any other band, to work with and bad people. I don't think it would matter what label we were on as long as the people who we were directly in contact with (A&R, etc.) were fans of our music and were out for our best interest as well as theirs. We believe there are people out there, and we have actually met a few, that we think are genuine and are genuine fans of music.

Does the lack of mainstream radio airplay ever start to bother you much, or do you get enough satisfaction playing live for loyal and potential followers?

Jon: I don't know if the lack of airplay has bothered us. We know we're not on a major label and we know the nature of mainstream radio. We are playing a style of music that doesn't fit neatly into the current popular categories on radio so I don't think we blame them. We live for playing live. Everything else is secondary.

Has Obsessions Become Phobias received much college radio airplay?

Jone: We do get a lot of feedback from people hearing our songs on college and Internet radio but it is hard for us to get statistics on how much we are actually played.

How great a part has Man's Ruin played in promoting Obsessions Become Phobias?

Jon: Being a small label with a lot of bands on its roster, they do what they can. We have had tons of Internet press and numerous articles worldwide ranging from smaller stoner rock 'zines in Germany to Alternative Press here in the US. But it is definitely a group effort between the work Man's Ruin does and what we do. They have done great things for us and enabled us to do so much more for ourselves.

On the web:
Disengage