I don’t think whoever first dubbed Nashville “Music City” had bands like Thirdface in mind when they bestowed that broad name upon the Tennessee capital. Yet the hardcore-punks’ incongruity among a town known for its blues and country music feels apt, given that their erratic sound manages to stand out even among their genre peers—so much so that Touché Amoré’s Jeremy Bolm enlisted them last summer for his compilation celebrating the current screamo/emoviolence scene.
Thirdface’s second album Ministerial Cafeteria only doubles down on the unique palette the band presented on their 2021 debut Do It with a Smile. To hear them discuss it, they not only took cues from Helmet, The Jesus Lizard, Infest, early Refused, and even that latter band’s fellow countrymen The Hives for the new material, but even looked to horror movies and other non-musical sources to craft these 12 songs: Nightbreed (and, for the true Barker heads, Rawhead Rex), Blacula, YuYu Hakusho, and Shel Silverstein all come up in their track-by-track breakdown of the LP, which vocalist Kathyrn Edwards notes manages to maintain a balance between “booty-shaking beats” and the band’s inherent “frantic weirdness.” Atop all of this lays Edwards’ snarling vocals, which address everything from American-funded genocide to spiraling psyches—all of it tied to “the tiring song and dance of living under a horrible capitalistic system that really does just make you sick. Literally.”
With the record out today via Exploding in Sound, Edwards and guitarist David Reichley, bassist Maddy Madeira, and drummer/recording engineer Shibby Poole (whose work with the sludgy mathcore trio Yautja informs much of the technical chaos that shapes the record) all helped us get a better sense of the lyrical and musical components that together form the group’s confrontational second album. Check it out below, and purchase the album here.
1. “Mantras”
Kathryn: We start the album off with me explaining a thread that weaves through the album a lot. I’m one of the least intentionally vulnerable people you’ll meet (and I say this in an attempt at admitting to my own faults). This song definitely begins the down spiral of my psyche while writing lyrics for the album. The hope of attempting to become even more closed-off to prevent the potential of hurt feelings. Clocking into Avoidant LLC.
David: I really liked writing this one. The opening riff was supposed to be way slower and sludgier, but Shibby had such a fun drum part that we edited it down a lot to make more sense that way. I was vibing on a lot of Helmet and Heresy for this.
Maddy: This song took a frustratingly long time to fully flesh out, but it quickly became one of my favorites to play live once we got all the parts nailed down. It’s such a fun combo of mean and sassy, commanding and playful.
Shibby: When we play this live, we do a goofy extended intro version that we didn’t want to do on the record. David wanted to try this thing that he couldn’t really articulate (I think it was from an Unwound record, or Hatred Surge) and he was making these weird mouth sounds and to me it sounded like when a tape machine is turned on while a sound is playing. So I took the initial feedback we’d recorded and sent it back into the tape machine and recorded the sound of the tape machine being started “from stop” as an homage to those sounds.
2. “Meander”
Kathryn: It’s easy: the tiring song and dance of living under a horrible capitalistic system that really does just make you sick. Literally.
David: Musically I wanted something really youth-crew-y and thrashy (a.k.a. Infest). I remember coming up with the ending riff at my dad’s and feeling so excited.
Maddy: We all love The Hives—the way their two guitars have a kind of conversational back and forth has always lit up my brain in the best way. I wanted to have a little “talk back” part á la The Hives so David and I alternate notes very briefly during the intro. Sounds tasty as hell through headphones.
3. “Midian”
Kathryn: The first of the cinematic themes on the album. The bulk of lyrics for this album were written during the heart of the COVID lockdown, and during that time was when I really confronted my depression and anxiety. I really like a concept in the movie Night Breed that we all could potentially be harboring a dark side, one that can manifest physically—darkness so strong that it can have a community. While I don’t (currently) agree that my wacky brain chemistry is “darkness,” I did want to personify it as an unrelenting and inescapable character that could invade my home and possess.
David: I remember wanting to be grindy and metallic, but also very bouncy and sassy. This and “Bankroll” were the first two songs Shibby and I wrote for this record. Both were largely the same as the initial guitar demos aside from the intro and some bridges that Shibby directed.
4. “Sour”
Kathryn: This song is really bumping with Shibby/Maddy in the rhythm section, so I wanted to write off of them for my cadence, which made me write more lyrics for this than most songs we have. One of my favorite books growing up to recite was Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. A favorite poem there is the story of Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout—a girl who refused to take out the trash. The visual descriptors for the rancid food that were laying waste to her house—curdled, gooey, moldy—always stuck with me. I decided to write really simple, almost sing-song lyrics describing how I see the electoral system we have in place in this country. I see no options that aren’t literal trash that is trying to be force-fed to us by the ministerial cafeteria. I used to be a lot more of a publicly politically angry person, but this is definitely the lane I’m more happy with. Saves a lot of yelling on the internet, as far as speaking heated personal opinion goes. I choose to act in the ways I wish via assisting direct action instead.
David: Shibby did the initial drum and bass demo for this one all by himself, and I wanted to do something completely opposing him so I did a bunch of dumb clumsy lead stuff.
Maddy: Shibby and I hold it down while David runs off and does his own thing. His guitar part adds a lot of tension and uncertainty to the structure that Shibby and I provide, which fits really well with the overall theme of the song.
5. “Pure Touch”
Kathryn: As a woman in the world we live in, I feel like I’ve had my want of sex and the use of my sexuality used against me, seen as a negative, and generally repressed. This is my ode to wanting, unapologetically. I also think the layered vocals on the bridge are one of the coolest group vox we’ve done. I present my lyrics to the class, and it’s always cool to see what ideas they have for their use of the words.
David: I wanted something that blasted hard and then got spooky and kinda sexy. I feel like Kathryn really felt the vibes with the lyrics on this one. This one was mostly unchanged from the initial version I brought to the group. Maddy had a very last-minute edit to the intro section, which freaked me out, but it was definitely the right call. The bridge was annoying to learn because I made it harder than it needed to be.
Maddy: I wanted this song to have a punchy, rhythmic chant happening in the background right before the build up toward the end. It was a lot of fun to work on that part, and I like the way it interacts with the bass and drums. When we were recording, David did a sick lil’ guitar lick during the extra sassy part (0:48) that he’d never really done before, and I remember Shibby and I had to refrain from screaming and ruining the take because it was so cool.
6. “DOV”
Kathryn: This song title stands for “direction of view,” which is (vaguely) a photography term. I mostly wanted to nod at my other elders (35-pluses) with the name, since it matches that of a skeezy known predator photographer. People will really let men get away with anything if they’re holding a camera and calling it art. Probably was watching some Italian movie about models or something.
David: Shibby and Maddy did this one as well, and not much has changed from the initial demo.
7. “Bankroll”
Kathryn: This is one of my favorite songs on the album. It has the most consistent booty-shaking beats while not diminishing our frantic weirdness. I look forward to the mosh. “Bankroll” is just a glimpse into my naturally bitter nature. Some people are born with a winning hand, and sadly that was not me! It’s forever made me angry and feel like there are some people I just can’t connect with because they can’t really fathom real-deal hardship, not to play the Olympics. It’s also very often made me feel like I’m just a wet blanket for not being able to look past people's unearned privileges.
David: I was listening to a lot of Morrissey and early Refused for this one, and wanted a bop. I feel like Shibby hates this one and he called it Britpop in the studio.
Maddy: I called this one “David’s Southern Rock Song.”
8. “Stalkwalk”
Kathryn: The story of Prince Mamuwalde! An African royal who travels to Transylvania to request aid from Count Dracula (follow me here) to help suppress the transatlantic slave trade. For his efforts, he’s turned into a vampire and locked away for generations while his wife is left to die in the same tomb. Blacula is a favorite movie with a fantastic score, and I had to include it in a song. David’s riffs during the bridge really ties this all together for me.
David: I initially wrote this as a very fast and short [song], but it ended up being long and very part-y. The last couple of sections took a bit of workshopping/elbow grease, if I remember correctly.
Maddy: This one was a challenge! Mostly for me! So fast! So noodly!
9. “Beneviolent”
Kathryn: This is a real looking-angrily-in-a-mirror-and-punching-it-type beat. The best way to skate by in life is to fit into a mold given to you. I refuse!
David: Maddy and Shibby came up with the bass and drums for this one, and then I wanted to be as noodley as possible on top of it.
Maddy: I was listening to a lot of Jesus Lizard at the time and came up with the beginning riff, then Shibby and I knocked out the rest of the song together. I remember Shibby and me both thinking that we needed more short songs, which are harder to make with David around ;)
10. “Artifact of Darkness”
Kathryn: Had to fit one anime referential song on here. There is an episode of YuYu Hakusho that always felt more touching than others. There’s a character who’s trying to save his dying adoptive mother from an illness. This character is willing to use harmful and forbidden objects to heal her, while sacrificing himself in the process. As a kid of an adopted mom who had to deal with various illnesses up ’til [her] passing, I’ve always had a soft spot for this episode. Being able to talk out my ideas to the gang and have Shibby give it life (“This is where the haunted mirror is talking in the song”) feels really good. And even better, it sounds sick AF.
David: This one was supposed to be a little more spooky sounding. Was trying to rip off Ved Buens Ende/Virus, but I don’t have the skills to pay those bills. I wrote the middle part of the song at practice one day while the rest of these fuckers were gabbing instead of riffing and then wrote the rest of the song around the middle part.
11. “Trap Revealed”
Kathryn: Going round two with a more vaguely Clive-Barker-movie-themed song. He’s one of my favorite scary minds. Rawhead Rex is a classic story of a small town releasing a demon due to lost history. The discussion of losing information about the past should be on the top of everyone's mind. It can really cause you to make missteps if you don’t know what people have done before you. In this song, that’s opening a tomb to a flesh-eating beast. Sometimes it’s worse. Like funding genocide ’cause it’s different when you do it. Lost knowledge just turns everything into a cycle of destruction.
David: This one is nice, riffy, and one of my favorites on the album. It was really fun to write, and I think of that process whenever I hear it. This came about from me sending Shibby a Pantera rip off riff over a voice memo that I fucked up, and Shibby wrote a drum part to the fucked-up riff instead of the correctly played riff. It was a long jam to try and get something together for Jeremy Bolm’s compilation, but once we locked in that first riff it was like the rest of the song wrote itself.
Maddy: Shibby does a crazy drum fill toward the end of the song that I think was a happy accident that made it onto the record.
12. “Purify”
Kathryn: Definitely had fun writing a simple batch of lyrics to go with this breakneck song. I think my main goal was to have people really dance. This is my primal scream of burning it all to the ground to rebuild something better on top. For this song specifically, it’s me that needs to be rebuilt. A meltdown doesn’t have to just be a waste.
David: I wanted something long, droney, and punk. Stringing this one together was laborious, even though the idea behind it was so simple.
Maddy: This is one of my favorites to play. I love a straightforward ripping punk song, and I think David wrote “Purify” with that in mind. Shibby’s cymbal hits that accent Kathryn’s vocal parts during the verses are soooo satisfying.
