Call it experimental, call it hardcore, call it Christiansen. In an age of dull, boring pop-punk, this quartet of Louisville rockers have jump started the progressive hardcore movement that At The Drive In pioneered, and the fans are loving it. Backed by Revelation records, there’s no stopping this movement. Life In A Bungalo got to speak with singer Brandon Bondehagen a week before the band’s CMJ date with Andrew WK and Joan Jett.

How long have you guys been together?
We’ve been together since 1998, but we just starting touring. At first we were just a side-project; we would juggle band practice, school, and play out on the weekend. These past two years we’ve been touring straight. In the past year, we got a booking agent and a manager, so things have been starting to come together now.

When did you sign to Revelation?
We originally released a record on Eulogy Records out of Florida. The e.p. that was released on Revelation was actually recorded for Eulogy, but they were not interested in the direction we were going, and they just let us go with the e.p. and no catch. We shopped that around, until we found Revelation. A lot of influential music was on Revelation at one point, and they were one of the labels that responded when we sent it out to them. They came out to SXSW, and we started negotiations. From there the rest is history.

Christiansen is being called an experimental noise rock act, but at one time you would have been considered melodic hardcore. What are some of the bands that you listen to that helped build your sound?
There were a lot of influential bands coming out of Louisville when we first got into the scene, like Endpoint, Enkindle, Slint and Guilt. There was a lot of great stuff coming out of our hometown. That just influenced us, on top of the stuff that was on MTV. The really raw indie rock that helped mold our sound came out of Louisville.

Your style sounds as if you are taking hardcore and completely deconstructing it and then rebuilding it in a new order. Is that what you are trying to accomplish?
When we were doing the e.p., we were just taking sounds that we were into, listening to other band’s records, and we were trying to harness their guitar sound. For example, The Refused album “Shape Of Punk To Come,” their guitars are so thick, and we wanted that sound to come through our amps—to sort of emulate that. We just messed around with different variations and the settings on our amps. We just experimented with different guitars, amps, heads, until we found something we really liked—something that is darker and warmer. There is hardly any treble on our songs. We took the drum and bass sound that we loved from our old album and added this new guitar element.

Have you achieved the sound you want?
Yeah, when it comes to tones and stuff, but who’s to say what our next album might sound like? Right now, we are really satisfied with the guitars and the sound in general.

On the new record, you sing the line “We are all going to die alone, you are such a little girl,” and the line just gets hammered in over and over again. That is such a strong statement. How do you come up with lyrics like that? Are you telling a story or is it stream of consciousness?
For that song, that was a story about two people, and this was a letter one guy was writing after he passed away. One of his good friends found it, and she is reading through it. That song in particular is told in a storybook way, and that is the only song that is done like that on the record. I write about what I am influenced by, like arts and literature. I just try to take things that I read or have seen and try to manipulate it into lyrics. We have a lot of time on the road, driving from place to place, so I have time to think about things like that. When you are traveling on the road, you are sort of losing touch with reality. Everything is put aside except you and the music.

What’s one of the hardest songs you’ve ever written; either because of the theme or just lyrically?
That song we were talking about We All Die Alone, that came at a moment when you have this realization that death is inevitable. The end of life is death. A lot of people have come up to me and have said that the song makes them feel really uncomfortable, because you make death so clear and plain. And a lot of people don’t want to hear that. For a while I didn’t want to hear it either, but eventually you get over it. I wanted to open peoples’ eyes to reality. It was difficult to put that out there. Now I’ve become more comfortable.

Do you think there is still hope for music today?
I think there is still hope. For a while there it was difficult. There have been tours that we have been on where after the show we have become despondent, because the kids weren’t really into our music. But every once in a while we would get a few kids that were really attached to it, and then you turn around and you see bands like Thursday or the Kings of Leon, Mars Volta. These bands are bringing back rock and making it even weirder. So, I have faith that these next couple of years are going to be really good years.