Melodic / Skate Punk rockers from Fredericksburg VA! The five-piece PERSONAL CRISIS consists of Aaron (Vocals), Chris (Guitar), Hunter (Guitar), Nick (Bass) and Mikey (Drums). Following the success of the debut album “Heavy Metal Pool Party” which was released in late 2019, the band returned to record and produce brand new 14 tracks full-length “Wasted Days”, out on 26 August 2022. Their second album is said to largely revolves around the idea of class struggles and the working class. Waste no time, we are now with Aaron Owens for more details.
- Interview by Atandistorted [August 28, 2022]
1: Hello punks! First of all, please introduce the band; history, lineup, etc? Why has it been named as PERSONAL CRISIS?
Hello, we are Personal Crisis. Our current line up consists of myself (Aaron Owens) on vocals, Nick Fox on bass/vocals, Chris Thompson on guitar/vocals, Hunter Kolbenstetter on guitars/vocals, and last but not least Mikey Golas on drums.
Delving into our history is interesting because honestly this band has been around for like 12 years as it started when I was a freshman in high school. I had honestly first picked up guitar in 2010ish, I wasn’t very good back then but in 2011 I decided to form a band with my best friend and bass player at the time, Chris Blankenship (not to be confused with Chris Thompson who is currently in the band).
So we formed this band with some other friends we knew at the time and our original name was “The Color of Nothing” consisting of Jacob Canul on vocals, me on rhythm guitar, Chris Blankenship (former Skumboyz bass player and current bass player for Toxitolerant) on bass, and Andrew Funderburke on guitar. We didn’t even have a drummer, I think he just never showed up and honestly we had zero idea of what we were doing, we didn’t even have a set genre direction but we recorded like three one take improve songs on an iPhone once… pretty sure we all trashed it and have no idea where those recordings are to this day.
Andrew Funderburke and Jacob Canul left the band for obvious reasons but Chris and myself wanted to keep going, so I had another good friend who at the time was named Josh Haynes (currently going by Jay Daemon) join the band as our lead guitarist, and I became the vocalist/rhythm guitarist. We went by a new terrible name, “The Unaccepted”. Played one talent show drummerless covering Nirvana of all bands.
Around 2013, we eventually were introduced to Garrett Cox as our drummer, changed our name to “Personal Crisis” which was a complete rip off of a song titled “Personality Crisis” by the New York Dolls. (If you couldn’t tell, we had a hard time deciding whether we were a grunge band or a glam band at the time.) I think honestly the name best describes misery, anxiety, depression well. Things we all felt every day, so we kept it.We played one talent show with this line up and there’s at least one shitty youtube video of it somewhere which included the very first incarnation of “She Knocks Me Off My Feet”.
Garret ended up moving out of state the following year and Jay had left the band due to circumstances out of his control, so we were on an endless search for a drummer and guitarist for a bit. We recruited Julian Sanchez (former guitarist of Skumboyz and current guitarist of Toxitolerant) who became our rhythm guitarist and soon after, Jake Witter (former vocalist of Skumboyz) on the drums. We had also recruited Justin Ring on lead guitar/vocals… yes we had three guitarists on stage and yes it was awkward.
We played numerous shows with this band, namely at the Grog and Tankard. Our punk roots were showing more here in this era but we still hadn’t developed our sound, it was like hard rock with punk influence. We recorded like one live “EP” that we just never gave to anyone, I still have it at home somewhere.
Towards the end of it all in 2016 the band had a falling out as disputes within the band got unhealthy, particularly with Justin and Chris and the majority of members were looking for something harder so they formed Skumboyz, which back then we kinda had a rivalry and bitterness towards each other but honestly they were a very tight band when it was around and then later Chris and Julian formed Toxitolerant, which if you’re into the style of hardcore, you may be into.
Justin and myself decided to keep going with the band despite knowing how argumentative he was and it really showed once we recruited Nick Fox on bass/vocals and Scott Fleck on lead guitar/vocals. Justin switched to drums, eventually quit and I honestly just never let him back in, cool dude but not great for a band setting. Plus I wanted to do skate punk, he really wanted to do hard rock.
Jay came back to the band in 2018 as the drummer. We played some shows, and recorded some demos and were starting to mold to that skate punk sound. He quit again later to focus on life and I’m still in contact with that dude today.
Mikey (former Brainbuster drummer and current GTI drummer) soon joined after his former band had broken up and we recorded “Heavy Metal Pool Party” as our first full release, then afterwards, “Wasted Days”. Scott ended up joining the military and I decided to drop guitar because it is very difficult to play guitar, sing, and have stage presence all at once. After Scott left we recruited Chris Thompson and Hunter Kolbenstetter as our new guitarists and now here we are.
2: How do you define the music and sound of PERSONAL CRISIS? Where does the influence and inspiration for your identity and direction come from?
In the earlier years of the band I would say we were a hard rock band mixed with punk influence, but we’ve evolved into a skate punk band by the time “Heavy Metal Pool Party” came out.
On “Heavy Metal Pool Party” I think our inspirations were all over the place musically as a lot of the older songs like “Wall” and “One Day” were rather hard rock and ska punk influenced while songs like “Blown Away” and “Propaganda” sounded closer to skate punk bands like NOFX and Bad Religion. Then of course we had songs like “Spirit of America” and “In My Head” which were more hardcore punk based.
On “Wasted Days”, I would call us skate punk with hardcore punk and power metal influence. While most of the songs on the album have the typical features of skate punk such as 4/4 time signatures and extensive vocal harmony use, we tend to take the metal influence and sprinkle it into the guitar solos. A few of our songs have breakdowns so I would say that’s where the hardcore punk influence comes in.
Overall I would say that our largest influences would be: Good Riddance, 88 Fingers Louie, Bad Religion, NOFX, and Lagwagon. Which is like 80% to 90% of our sound.
Small influences being: Dragonforce, Falconer, Minor Threat, Black Flag, Converge. Which make up the slightest amount of influence, so slight that you probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn’t said anything.
3: What themes and topics are often written in your lyrics? Do you think your messages will motivate listeners or do you just want to voice your opinion without caring about others?
Our songs are pretty political and I would say we’re more on the left side of things for sure. Personally, I’m a market socialist which basically is the idea that I do not believe the state should run everything but rather that workers should own the workplaces in the form of Co-ops.
The ideology really shows up in the form of lyrics as most of the political songs we write are based along the lines of workers rights, exploitation, taxes, Medicare for all, access to food, democracy, etc. making up about 70% of our songs.
The other 30% are generally about personal relationships. Songs like “Vibe Check” and “She Knocks Me Off My Feet” being about people who have emotionally abused me in my past. “In My Head” being about mental illness not being taken seriously.
“Caffeine Pills” was about an ex band member but we really don’t play it anymore because we all just kinda talked and realized that we’re all actually pretty cool dudes in both parties.
Honestly to answer your second question, I would have to say both in a weird way because as much as I’d love to say that we would love for a song to motivate people, the truth is that people tend to enjoy a song because it sounds cool and because the song sounds cool, people tend to overlook the lyrics and misinterpret them to their own views with the largest example being Rage Against the Machine. Everyone on the right makes fun of Rage for recently being perceived as having left messages, but in reality that’s how they have always been.
People have to take initiative and look into what is fact or fiction as well as what is right and what is wrong, point being that songs are largely emotional and not factual, which means they can inspire which is cool and all until you have to actually fight the opposition because the opposition is going to throw facts and information at you, and unfortunately in the political world of debate, facts can only be fought with facts, not emotion.
I do hope our songs motivate people in terms of getting up, taking interest, and looking into the problems stated within our material, but I wouldn’t want anyone to blindly take our songs as fact and end up becoming a person who combats things over emotion.
Passion and emotion are great things and everyone should have those qualities, but every individual should be able to defend their viewpoint with information as the viewpoint has to be feasible to taken seriously. Given the circumstances of the American citizens politically, I’m not banking on a song doing that but I hope to the people that do read lyrics deeply, that they understand that they should look into the problems and expose themselves to the facts of why our band advocates for a certain solution or system.
4: Please interpret your debut effort through “Heavy Metal Pool Party” LP 2019? Have you thought about anything missing from the album?
We recorded and mixed “Heavy Metal Pool Party” completely DIY in my basement which is really cool and all but it was kind of our downfall in a way. Furthermore, our knowledge of mixing and recording was very limited. “Heavy Metal Pool Party” had very poor guitar tones, I used a very poor choice in vocal mics, poor drum mic set up, we had bad peak volumes as well as lackluster compression and limiting skills, and we should have used drum samples, and recorded the guitars without processing but we were happy with it at the time.
Performance wise, while I thought some songs were good but none of them were at their full potential. I felt I could have added more vocal and guitar layers in some songs like “She Knocks Me Off My Feet”, “Blown Away”, and “Propaganda”. My vocals were off time in a few songs as well.
Songwriting wise I thought my lyrics were a little lame, I felt the songwriting was the best part of the album.
Honestly, even though it’s not a record I would listen to every day I’m still glad we did it, it’s where we were at the time and it’s not the worst thing I’ve heard especially as a first recording but like anything it could have been better. I will say that we have talked about possibly redoing some of the songs from “Heavy Metal Pool Party” at some point, but nothing set in stone.
5: Tell us something about your recent new tracks/singles; “Make it Great” and “Age of War”?
“Make It Great” is about the insurrection at the United States capital from the right. It just goes to see how easily people are fooled into doing things. There are people to this day who believe the election was stolen, but there’s overwhelming evidence that it never was stolen.
“Age Of War” is pretty much about basic rights to food, Medicare, shelter, college, etc. And how we should all pitch in towards our society’s future.
We recorded the songs ourselves and had Benedikt Hain and his crew at Outback Recordings mix and master the project and actually the whole album.
Both of videos were done by our current guitarist Chris Thompson, who owns Strydersound.
6: Please explain more about your new full-length “Wasted Days” and how do you describe PERSONAL CRISIS on this latest album? How do you see the band has progressed since the first LP?
“Wasted Days” is a much more serious record compared to “Heavy Metal Pool Party” as our lyrical content became overwhelming about political themes and I feel it is much more informed than the last album. Our sound is much faster on “Wasted Days” and is very shreddy in terms of guitar in comparison to our first album.
I think “Wasted Days” is better than “Heavy Metal Pool Party” in just about every way. Production wise we self recorded and did everything much better on the drum kit, I chose a seinheisser dynamic mic for vocals which matched the songs better, the lyrics were much clearer, the songwriting in more intricate, we were more to the grid and metronome, we had well thought out vocal harmonies, and last but not least our album was mixed and mastered by Benedikt Hain and his assistant Thomas Krottenthaler at Outback Recordings. I 100% recommend them to anyone who does heavier music.
There were a couple weird spots in the album for me but overall it’s a significant improvement and I honestly couldn’t be more proud of the guys in the band.
7: How do you find the deal with Allegedly Records for the release of “Wasted Days”? And also tell something about your collaboration with Andresa Nugraha?
I mean we love it at Allegedly records, they are very chill, supportive and It truly isn’t about numbers there. They truly care about everyone and are interested only in helping the bands on the label.
The bands on the label are very good as well, I would definitely check out Paperback Tragedy, Last Point, Vacant Skies, and Amuse as they all have pretty awesome music especially if you’re into skate punk and pop punk.
Andresa has done our artwork on both albums and I would highly recommend hiring him for artwork as he does a very fine job. People should also check out some of his music projects like “The Battlebeats”. He truly has a gift in art and music alike.
8: How about gigs and live shows in order to promote “Wasted Days”?
I mean we are still in the works of getting some shows going to promote “Wasted Days” we for sure are playing with A Wilhelm Scream and Rebuilder up in Norfolk Virginia on the 23rd of September and we have another show on December 2nd at the at the Pie shop in D.C.
We honestly all work a lot at our jobs and it’s getting hard to travel so we all just kind of play when we can.
9: Briefly report on the hardcore punk scene in Fredericksburg, Virginia?
The hardcore punk scene in Fredericksburg is largely being dominated by Powerviolence and Grindcore bands at this point and it’s very connected to Richmond. Some bands from that scene that I would recommend would be Lacking, ALPHA, LNT, Toxitolerant, The Get Off, and Love Roses to get a good feel of what our scene is currently sounding like, ALL of which cool in their own ways.
Skate punk isn’t really huge in Fredericksburg as there are only like two skate punk bands in our area and our drummer is in both of them. (Personal Crisis and GTI whomst I would also recommend a listen). Our label mates are generally either up north or towards the west out of the states.
10: Thank you. Any last words?
Thanks for doing this interview and these questions were actually really good questions. If anyone is near Norfolk on September 23rd come party with A Wilhelm Scream, Rebuilder, and ourselves!
Thanks a lot and stay cool!