Interview: STOMACH/Weekend Nachos
I just like for the pain and the misery to mean something more long-term. What good is it all bottled up inside anyways?
John Hoffman is a busy man, not only does he have an album coming soon from his new band STOMACH but another band of his, powerviolence heroes Weekend Nachos have recently announced that they will be reuniting for some live shows. Gavin Brown caught up with the vocalist/drummer to talk about both the formation of STOMACH and their crushing debut album Parasite and return of Weekend Nachos as well as hearing about insane live shows, his numerous other bands and favourite Chicago musicians.
E&D: The debut STOMACH album Parasite is out very soon. Did you want to make the bleakest album you could with this record?
John: I definitely try to pull all the negative energy I have and put it into STOMACH. I’ve done the same in previous bands I’ve been in. I just like for the pain and the misery to mean something more long-term. What good is it all bottled up inside anyways? And yes, I do attempt to make each record more expressive in these ways every time I write something new.
E&D: Was the creation and recording of Parasite a smooth process?
John: I would have to say no on that one… quite the opposite, actually. During recording, my guitar amp broke down 3 different times… I found a shop in my hometown that tried to service it but it just kept having problems. I was engineering the album myself, so this was just a massive hiccup every time, because I was in the middle of tracking guitars. Eventually, I ended up just biting the bullet and re-recording all the guitars and running them through my bass gear, which was in way more reliable condition and ended up sounding great! It was all worth it in the end, but it was a pretty painful process.
E&D: What have been the biggest influences in the sound of Parasite and STOMACH in general?
John: When I started writing for STOMACH, I really just wanted to do an Earth/Sunn type of thing, really ambient and dark and drone-influenced. As time has gone on, you can hear a lot more of the straight forward sludge groups, Corrupted, Grief, Noothgrush, Toadliquor, Cavity/Floor, etc. There’s also some of the slightly more stoner metal influenced bands like Electric Wizard, Bongzilla and Eyehategod coming out in the STOMACH sound on Parasite. But really, at the end of the day, my goal with this album was to mirror the vibe on the first Grief album.
E&D: Have you got plans yet for more music from Stomach?
John: I definitely plan to keep releasing more music. Right now, I’m in the process of recording two new songs that will appear on a split 7” with Northless, and I also have a 2nd full-length album mostly written that I’ll try to start recording sometime in 2024.
E&D: How did you hook up with Adam to form STOMACH in the first place?
John: Adam is one of my oldest friends in music – He and I go way back to the formation of Weekend Nachos in Dekalb, IL. That was 2004, so it’s coming up on 20 years now. His love for Fu Manchu (and stoner metal/sludge bands like Eyehategod and Floor) really played a major role in getting me into slow, detuned, heavy music. I don’t know how or when I would have discovered the bands that contributed to the STOMACH sound, but I’d like to think I never would have if not for Adam. He and I actually don’t live too far from each other these days, so I got the idea one day to ask him to play guitar in STOMACH. I knew we could practice easier than if I had dudes from Chicago in the band, and plus, I’ve always wanted to play music with Adam again since the early WN days. He’s just a good dude, and our sense of humour is also very similar.
E&D: Have you got any other live shows coming up this year and going into next year?
John: Right now, we don’t have anything else booked, but I’d really like to start playing shows regularly. Adam and I have a great thing going and it’s gone over well with the few crowds we’ve played to so far.
E&D: What have been the best gigs that STOMACH have played so far?
John: We’ve only done 3 shows, but I’ll just say – I was really not happy with how I performed at our first show, which was with our friends in High Priest. I just suck at playing bass and doing vocals at the same time, which is what I was doing during that version of the band. We’ve played three more shows since switching to a 2-piece line-up of me on drums/vocals and Adam on guitar, and they were both awesome. Back in July was a fest called Summer Showdown with a ton of grindcore, powerviolence and noise bands, and just recently we opened for Crowbar.
E&D: Are you looking forward to getting back onstage with Weekend Nachos for your forthcoming shows supporting Harms Way and at next year’s Maryland Deathfest?
John: I’m definitely excited for the Nachos shows. It’s a great feeling knowing that you can break up for 7 years and people still wanna see you play – I can’t wait to play shows with my friends again and I hope people do some stage dives.
E&D: What led to the band getting back together for these shows after all these years?
John: That’s a good question. Drew has explained it as the pandemic really making people more excited about live music again, which, I guess I missed cuz I’ve been out of the loop. All I really do is hang out with my daughter, work a day job and occasionally write horror stories and STOMACH songs…I’m not really involved in any kind of music scene anymore. But this resurgence of people appreciating touring bands and buying merch/records is apparently what got Drew wanting to do WN shows again. It took me a minute to get on board, but after a while, I just started to want the same thing. Now here we are – The comeback show was announced and it sold out a decent-sized venue in less than a day. Our presence won’t be this hyped forever so we’ve gotta just have fun while it lasts. People will no longer give a shit about this in 6 months.
E&D: Is it a cool thing for you to be playing with Harms Way as you used to be in the band?
John: I don’t even think about being a former member anymore. To be honest, Harms Way are just good friends of mine, and they have been for almost two decades now. Nachos and Harms Way used to play shows together all the time and we even toured together a few times. Our bands are definitely like brothers and it’s always made sense to keep doing shit together.
E&D: What have been some of your favourite shows that you’ve played with Weekend Nachos over the years?
John: Weekend Nachos played so many shows that it’s really hard to say. It sounds tacky but I feel like I would leave out too many good ones if I even named one of them. But since I don’t like to avoid answering questions, I’ll just say – The final Boston show in 2016. It was at the Middle East and I swear to you, it seemed like there were two stories of people moshing at that show, like one crowd on top of another. At one point there was an actual mosh pit on the stage, and it wasn’t even a big stage! I remember that show feeling like an actual prison riot. It was nuts and extremely memorable for me.
E&D: What were some of the other highlights of Weekend Nachos back in the day?
John: One time, there was a crew fight in the parking lot of a fest we were supposed to play. Guns went off, a few people got their heads caved in, etc. It was pretty violent. The cops put “CAUTION” tape up and our van was trapped inside the crime scene area – So we couldn’t leave. The show was cancelled but we were stuck there for 6 ½ hours and didn’t leave until almost 1:00 AM. The promoter of the show tried to tell us we weren’t getting paid because the show didn’t happen and I was basically like “Fuck you, that’s definitely not what’s going to happen”. We got paid in full and left to drive 6 hours back to Chicago, all of us in very bad moods. Dumb shit like that happened all the time when Weekend Nachos would play. The rest of my memories are a lot better than that one, though.
E&D: Has there been any talk of possible new music from Weekend Nachos?
John: I wrote a song called ‘OLD FUCKING LOSER’ and shared the lyrics with the guys… we all laughed about it. I wrote music for that song too, but no one was into the idea of actually recording it, not even me. Since then, there has been absolutely no discussion about releasing new music for Weekend Nachos.
E&D: Are there plans for Ledge to bring out any new music?
John: Nope, Ledge is 100% finished. I wasn’t really feeling that band anymore, there was always something very off about it for me. Almost like that was the brief period between Weekend Nachos and STOMACH where I was “figuring myself out”. I’m happy to put Ledge behind me because I think STOMACH is so much better.
E&D: You have played in so many other bands from Spine, Cyborg, Hideous and Pit Of Spikes to name a few. What have been some of the highlights from your career in music?
John: I’m very impressed that you’re even aware of some of those bands… aside from Spine, none of those bands really did much at all! I would say Spine is definitely a highlight, I loved doing that band with my Kansas City friends. Cyborg was also a short-lived, pretty fucking solid powerviolence band. Just a few years before Weekend Nachos started, I was in a fast thrashy youth crew band called Hostage Situation that I still think was pretty good at the time. The Few And The Proud full-length is also a pretty solid album – Just pure straight edge hardcore that kinda sounded like Outburst and Chorus of Disapproval.
E&D: Who are your all-time favourite bands and artists from Chicago and Illinois?
John: Charles Bronson is one of my favourite hardcore bands, not just from Illinois but from anywhere. I also grew up listening to 88 Fingers Louie and Kungfu Rick, who don’t sound anything alike but were still two of my favourite local bands as a kid. The Repos and No Slogan are major highlights from going to shows in the last 15-20 years. On a more well-known level, Smashing Pumpkins are, without a doubt, my favourite Chicago band of all time.
E&D: What are the albums and bands that you have even listening to most this year?
John: I find it very hard to keep track of anything new that comes out. I usually listen to it once and then move on to something else. I’ve been listening to Grief and Neutral Milk Hotel almost non-stop the past few months.
