Thirdface Shreds Heavy-Music Norms on ‘Do It With a Smile’ – Nashville Scene

Photo: Diana Lee Zadlo

If your band plays raw, heavy music marked by full-tilt tempos and throat-peeling screams, it can be hard to set yourself apart from more than 40 years of music in that vein. While many of their ultra-fast punk peers stay well within the trails blazed by bands like crossover thrash standard-bearers D.R.I., hardcore punks Infest or grindcore progenitors Napalm Death, Nashvilles Thirdface has thoughtfully crafted a sound they can proudly call their own. Abandoning formulaic norms, the Nashville foursome has spent the past several years finding new ways to create music that shows the influence of titans in the genre without regurgitating their work.

I think Ive heard us described as a metal band before, and that kind of makes me laugh, says bassist Maddy Madeira, because we kind of went into this band thinking about punk and hardcore. I think it feels easier to just say, Yeah, its like a hardcore punk band, even if it kind of has more metallic moments.

Theres a lot going on in the bands debut LP Do It With a Smile, out Friday. Where musicality isnt really a priority for a lot of groups in this part of the heavy spectrum, it definitely is for Thirdface. Their outrageous thrash is centered on unorthodox riffs with discernible melodies. While Madeira notes that the whole group including drummer Shibby Poole (also of Yautja) and vocalist Kathryn Edwards (also a co-founder of venue Drkmttr) has an interest in a broad spectrum of sounds, she credits guitarist David Reichley with leading the charge to push the boundaries.

He just has such an interesting style thats really influenced from all different genres, she says. Going into writing music together without putting ourselves in a box I think leaves a lot of room for cool melodies and weird melodic parts.

Album art: Thirdface, 'Do It With a Smile'

Thirdface doesnt question genre norms with their sound alone they step over boundaries at every opportunity. While the stereotypical aesthetics of thrash and powerviolence call for illegibly scrawled fonts, horror movie samples or black-and-white photos of nuclear aftermath, the group throws a curveball. The new albums artwork and layout were done by Reichley and Edwards, who put together hues of periwinkle and violet on a cover that looks like something from 80s New York street art. The bands promo photos were taken in the house where Madeira and Poole live, showing off their rosy-toned hallways, photos of pups and an impressive collection of VHS tapes. You might expect the LP to be coming out on a label deeply entrenched in the world of DIY hardcore, but Do It With a Smile is being released in partnership with Brooklyns Exploding in Sound Records, an imprint best known for bands that draw on old-school indie rock, like fellow Nashville bands Pile and Shell of a Shell.

We stick out like a sore thumb on that label, Madeira says with a shrug. But I think that the press photos and the artwork reflect who we are as people as a group and as individuals pretty well, because were just trying to do our thing, not really trying to be anything or, like, look extra tough.

Ensuring that the album would feel like a finished work that purely belongs to Thirdface, Poole recorded and mixed all of it above the garage in the backyard. The title of the record comes from a line in the lead single Villains!, a nasty three-minute track that morphs from a slog through the sludge to a wretched full-speed run across scorched earth. Madeira explains the songs focus on the all-too-familiar expectation that workers should accept their working conditions with a grin, forced or not something that punks and metal bands have been good at screaming about.

Its a song about wage slavery, and just how much it sucks to work a job that exploits your labor for pennies, Madeira says. I think that line from that song specifically is a really good indicator of what were about.

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Thirdface Shreds Heavy-Music Norms on 'Do It With a Smile' - Nashville Scene